Hi Everyone,
I am restoring my 1992 Fireblade and need to remove the bank of carburettors in order to split and refurbish them. Having removed all the required pipes, cables etc and loosened off the clamps as per the manual I cannot get them to move! I believe this is a common problem as the rubbers that connect the carbs to the inlet manifolds become hard.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to break the seal on the manifold rubbers without the damaging the carbs themselves. I cannot see any obvious places where a lever might be used to help with this process. As far as I know the carbs have never been off the bike as I have owned it since 1993 when it was only six months old. Any help would be much appreciated.

 

This is a very common issue, you are not alone. There are a couple things to try. A side to side rocking action sometimes works. What has also worked for me is to take a hair drier and warm the boots up with it. This will soften them up a bit and might aid in getting them loose.
As a side note, you should probably plan on getting a new set for the reinstall.

 

Thank you hamlin6 for such a quick reply. I'll certainly give the hair dryer idea a go. Thanks also for the heads up on getting a new set of boots. I was intending to do that as I had originally thought one of them was split or perished, as when I started the bike there was petrol pouring from the carb area. I have since found that it is coming from the T pipe between carbs 3 an 4 so I need to replace the O rings at these joints, hence the need to remove the carbs and split them.

 

Wow, you've had it since then, that's incredible. I'd sure love to be working on that bike for sure. Have any pictures of it?

Oh yea, welcome to the forum Heathcote.

 

Thanks for the welcome IDoDirt. I bought the bike with 600 miles on it and it has now done about 15,000 so still fairly low mileage. I do have other bikes to use so not all my riding is on the Fireblade. When I get her back together again I'll take some photos and try and post them. Mine is one of the black and bronze models which I always thought looked better than the more popular red, white and blue models, but each to his own.

 

Any examples here? The "Fireblade" model wasn't sold in the US. It was, but not with that name. Color schemes were different as well from EU models. Any images here?
https://www.motorcyclenews.com/bike-...ireblade/1992/

 

Hi IDoDirt, None of the bikes in your picture are anything like mine. The picture below is of the same model as mine in the same colour way. The early Fireblade had twin round headlamps, unlike the ones in your photo. Still no success with the carbs. Spent 3 hours today with a heat gun but haven't really got anywhere, maybe a little more movement than yesterday but not much. Will give it another try tomorrow.

This is not my bike but is the same colour.

 

There is good news and there is bad news. The good news is that the carburetor boots are the same up until 1999 for the 900RR, and still readily available, even new. The bad news is that with you being in the UK somewhere (I think) that they're not cheap. Well at least not as cheap as here in the US. So I think you can feel free to cut them off with a Dremel or similar tool. Used ones no matter how you look at it are going to be 20 years old at best, so probably not much better than yours. Here in the US they're about $10 each. In the UK it looks like they're more than double that.

That's a good looking bike and look forward to seeing yours complete.

 

Welcome Heatcote, I managed to find some piccies of the blade. Yours has barely run in!


Here is an example of the front of the first 'Blades'

This was the most popular colour scheme

 

To all those who provided advice on getting the carbs off my CBR900 Fireblade very many thanks. I am pleased to say I finally got them off yesterday. I tried using a Dremel as suggested by IDoDirt but found it difficult to get the tool into the right position to cut effectively so needed to find another way. At this point a lot of you might cringe because I resorted to using a woodworking chisel and mallet. I had inherited a couple of long narrow chisels that would reach all four rubber boots. I then removed the screws from the clamps attached to the cylinder head and slipped them out of the way. Then VERY, VERY carefully I cut two slots across the rubber boot about a quarter of an inch apart that allowed me to remove a section of the boot up as far as the clamp on the carburettor side. I did this on all four boots then applied some heat using a paper craft heat gun. After much pushing and pulling the bank of carbs finally relented and came free. I was pleased to find I had not damaged the flanges on the cylinder head in any way so all looks good for the rebuild.
Anyway thanks again for the ideas and inspiration from everyone.