SevenThreeSeven wrote:

Greg, looks like someone may have tried to make their own jet kit on your bike!

You're absolutely right. One of the 3 prior owners of my B4 was way out in the weeds, a carb witch-doctor. The carbs had Dynojet springs combined with some unknown brand of E-clip adjustable aftermarket needles (maybe Factory Pro or Dynojet?) but they still had the OEM Mukuni 102.5 Main Jets installed on the Emulsion Tubes.

The surprising thing is that when I bought it I had to ride it home, 425 miles, from Portland OR to Spokane WA, on a cold night in mid October of 2014. In spite of the bike's scruffy condition and the weird carb tune it ran great all the way (I froze). I rolled up to my garage at 3:30am feeling totally exhilarated.

After that ride to bring it home I only rode my B4 two other times with carbs before I took it off the road for my fuel injection conversion and general refurbishment/upgrades.

Wow man that's some dedication!! Kudos :)

Wow man that's some dedication!! Kudos :)

My brother and I have a term for doing things like that: "Epic Stupidity" (and I'm usually the one in charge of thinking up the things that qualify).

I tried to change the name of the thread to something more generic so I can use this as a build thread, but no luck. Regardless when I flipped the tank over the following is what I found. I contacted a guy out in Asheville NC who can fix it (braze or weld and respray/blend) but I'm not happy about it! It's a shame because the top side is so nice.

[img]http://i904.photobucket.com/albums/ac25 ... zqnrji.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i904.photobucket.com/albums/ac25 ... 8y8dkn.jpg[/img]

That's pretty messed up, no doubt. But I'm not surprised because there had to be something bad that had happened to this B4, otherwise it wouldn't have ended up stored away all those years. So the bad thing was a combination of bad carb tuning (probably responsible for the initial period of disuse) followed by a rusted out fuel tank.

I bet the scenario that ended with a 24 year old bike having only 3,800 miles and a badly rusted tank went something like this: The carb tuning circus was well underway, making the bike progressively more over-rich, making it harder and harder to deal with. So the bike was probably already sitting neglected more often than it was running. Then it was allowed to sit outside under one or more hard rainstorms (or it accidentally sat under a sprinkler system spray). This allowed water to get into the fuel tank which made the already bad starting and running problems even worse (people often don't even remember the big rain storm that got their bike, or they don't make the mental connection between the storms and the bike's new/worsening problems). So now the B4 probably wouldn't run at all. As a result it got pushed into the deep, dark back end of a garage and ignored. As time passed the water at the bottom of the fuel tank caused it to rust out. During this storage period the bike was sitting leaned over on its side stand so the water (heavier than fuel) pooled up against the lower left hand side inside the tank and that's exactly where it rusted out.

You just have to accept some bad with the all the good that this B4 has going for it. Great bike, low miles and in an amazing state of preservation (mostly), but something had to cause it to be preserved. Otherwise somewhere during the last 24 years it would almost certainly have racked up a bunch of miles/wear and it would have eventually been wrecked/trashed.

It's a pretty good hypothesis. I can't imagine this thing sat outside but you never know.

I just got accepted into the Bandit Alley forum so I've sent some PM's about some carbs I found for sale. Sure would be better than spending $130 for new stuff from Partzilla. If I have to do that I will but this would be better in my opinion, assuming they haven't been done over with Dynojet stuff as well.

Okay, Greg. Found your GSF400 thread over at Bandit Alley. I'm only 3 pages in, but I saw the Moyers fuel repair reference. I ran across this in my own search as well. I plan to use my spare money first on getting the thing idling smoothly, but after that, it seems the Moyers idea is gaining traction in my mind.

What do you think? How has the treatment held up over time for your bandit tank?

lknbandit400 wrote:Okay, Greg. Found your GSF400 thread over at Bandit Alley. I'm only 3 pages in, but I saw the Moyers fuel repair reference. I ran across this in my own search as well. I plan to use my spare money first on getting the thing idling smoothly, but after that, it seems the Moyers idea is gaining traction in my mind.

What do you think? How has the treatment held up over time for your bandit tank?

Yes I'm quoting myself - just want you to know I'm absolutely enamored by your build thread.

There's been some trick bandits on the alley over the years, I post as Chris H but don't get on there much theses days.
To be fair there's not many b's around these days so maybe one reason its quite, have to say though, there's some good info on that site.

My LiteTek o-ring kit came in today. It was around 9 days from door to door which isn't that bad. I've had USPS packages take longer. Here's a shot of what's included in the kit:



And a pic of how the o-rings come packaged. Everything is nicely labeled and has that nice green "Viton" color :)





The one thing I can't figure out is that on the website, there is a rectangular o-ring that fits around the top of the slide holder. I don't have a notch on my slide holder to retain that o-ring. Here's a pic of the carb slide holder that LiteTek has on their website, with the rectangular gasket in place:



And here's an image of my slide holder. You can see the geometry is slightly different. There isn't a spot for that rectangular o-ring. Is there something different about the carb models across the B4s?

One more question - I noticed that for some reason, the lower spacer on the Dynojet needle was crammed up against the e-clip. Not sure if this is correct or not. Assembly will be much more straight forward with the stock components. Here's a couple pics of how the spacer rested on the needle against the clip, covering the bottom couple notches (I had already taken the e-clip off at the point. It was on the middle notch):



And here's a shot of the Dynojet needle: