Easy way to get Sea Foam in fuel bowl is to take off fuel bowl and put the Sea Foam in fuel bowl then put the fuel bowl back on.

BurnPgh: I live in Aspinwall, not two hundred yards from the north side of the Highland Park Bridge, but I work in Monroevill/Penn Hills at Vocollect right off Rodi Rd.

If half a six of pabst is all it takes, and you don't me riding to your place (or you to mine, though I don't have a garage) we've got us a deal.

Diamond Jim:
Airbox has a nice new (under 1K miles) K&N filter I cleaned right before I started riding this spring.

I'm assuming the whole syringe/fuel hose procedure is just to get a concentrated (or pure) solution of seafoam in the carb, which can be done.

All: I'm going out and about to round up supplies for this endeavor (kinda new to the whole DIY mechanic stuff...) and hopefully try the easier stuff tonight and the harder stuff this weekend, as again, I can't afford to have a non-running bike even for a day.

I'm going to hit up some auto-places close by to see if i can get a can of Seafoam, anyone know any chains that have a good chance of carrying it? The shop I trust with my bike is almost an hour ride one way....

Interesting coincidence that you started having problems right about the same time you cleaned that K&N air filter. I wonder what would happen if you were to remove the filter and try a short ride. Poor mileage and refusal to run with the choke pulled sounds like the thing might be rich - just what might happen if there were some sort of problem with the air filter. And unlike what would happen if the carburetor were clogged, unless the float got damaged and is causing the fuel level to be high. If you still have your stock air filter you could try putting it back in to see what happens.

  Put some Sea Foam before you fill up it will be a stronger mix And you only need a couple oz.s

grab a can of carb cleaner next time you're out. And Pm me your address. I work until saturday but if you're free saturday I'll drop by. Maybe Luke (Ineclipse) will come aswell to drink and BS.

We best git our'sels some perogies if we gunna be wrencin' n'at! I would love to but I'm leaving tomorrow. Coming back next week, though. Hope to catch up with yinz feller yinzers after da god lovin' pen-gins win dat dare stanley cup!
But seriously, love to help out if I ever can. Do you have a stock exhaust? My backfiring issues were all do to exhaust leaks. That could be a lot of little things, or one or two big ones. BurnPGH will certainly help you out though, I think hes a great bet for anyone in need.
Good luck.
-Luke.

I added the seafoam Tuesday evening, but yesterday (wednesday) was raining so I wasn't able to tell if the seafoam helped all that much.

I haven't cleaned the filter yet, I'm going to take some time with it and clean it properly this weekend. However, when I took it out, the bike did start up and run much cleaner, so I'm hoping with a freshly cleaned filter it will have the same effect.

Hopefully by saturday evening I'll be able to tell you all is well with my engine. Thanks to everyone for the help, it is really appreciated as I have little to no clue what I'm doing, and it is nice to know that savage/s40 riders take care of their own.