Sticking carb slides?!?

[markjs]

After a lovely afternoon sunny, but cool and crisp fal day ride, I am so damn happy. I love the KZ's powerplant, and it's still tight. All it really needs is perhaps a ting bit of valve adjustment, and maybe the cam chain reset (though the noise is just a constant slight "tick tick tick", so I think it's more likely vlaves, but the wonderful thing is now I can go to work on the XS1100.

The XS is a full dresser, and I don't like the huge heavy bike genrally, but I do love the XS. Unfortunately, the KZ has 14K on it, and is super tight, and the XS has 60K on it, and is pretty good. Also the KZ is shiny and chromed, and the XS is rusty, and the mufflers are about non existant, so when I sell one it's gonna have to be the XS, because I just love the idea of having a prettier and tighter engine bike, complete with working mufflers and the whole nine yards. I will miss the XS.

The weird thing is after being used to the XS1100 "dresser", the KZ which is a bare bones bike, feels like a minibike with way too much zip.

[Guy_b_g]

Glad to see the bike is now working..glad to see you in a good mood.

You should bring that Honda mechanic a 6pack, good mechanics are worth their weight in gold.

Easy fixes are sometimes the most elusive, especially after you've beaten your head against the wall doing all the hard stuff.

I had a friend with a Z1, whose brother was the "mechanic", the carbs were puking fuel at an unbelievable rate, and I told him to check the float heights, and float valves. Didn't work, so I went over and looked..his brother had the carb vents hooked up to the fuek lines, and the fuel lines vented to the atmosphere.

Any good mechanic will always start with the simplest possibility first (remember Occam's Razor?).

Glad it all worked out for you!

[AlanB]

Hi Mark,

The answer you found was given by me on the first page of this thread, and appeared in a couple of other posts as well.

Enjoy the ride.

AlanB

[BirdsbobberXS]

Jumping into this thread and just seeing if I can find some help.

So I am very new to this XS world of yalls but I'm loving the bike that I picked up a few months ago! Simply awesome machine. This is my first time having one of these types of 4 single carb Mikuni set ups so I'm still learning. I bought the bike to finish off the bobber project that was started on it.

So got it running and was ready to ride. Rode around base one day and everything seemed to be working in great order. Next day decided to ride it to work. She was running but after a couple minutes she started to stay revved up after I accelerated. I mean she wouldn't rev down after I rolled off the throttle. Everytime I would give her throttle she would stay at whatever rpm I got her too. Could this be sticking slides or improperly synced carbs?! It could possibly be a vacuum leak but I do not think that would cause the rpm rev issue. I'm willing to learn because I love mechanics and get a real sense of pride when I revive my projects back to life! lol

Any help would be greatly appreciated guys!

My bike is 79 XS1100 Special with less than 40k on her.

[motoman]

Would someone PLEASE read my whole damn post! On the KZ I COMPLETELY disassembled and COMPLETELY cleaned the carbs, including slides, and it still sticks.

I am sorry if I am frustrated, but all I wanna know is what do you do when a clean slide sticks, and you can't afford to replace it?!?

As well, I am now down to about $60 to my name til next month, and my bike gets 15MPG, and I NEED an answer FAST!!!

I really am greatful for any help I can get, but I am only asking one simple question, and nobody is willing to answer so far, and I have searched this site and the web and cannot find that answer. One more time:

How to you get IMMACULATELY clean slides to stop sticking, when you CANNOT afford to replace them.

Again sorry for my anger, because both of you, I am greatful that you answered, but on these BBS's nobody ever reads the whole post!

'clean slides'.......hmmm. unscew the vacuum covers and pull the slides out. Then, without confusing which slide came out of which carb, wipe slides down with a clean laquer thinner soaked rag.