So first a little background.  I've been working on cars for about 7-8 years now.  I've worked on everything from swapping motors to roll cage construction.  I'm pretty familiar with working in the garage.

With that said, I found a great deal on a 2001 Savage with ~5,500miles.  The bike has been sitting for a few months and the owner couldn't get it to start anymore.  She thought it may be the gas but upon inspection of the tank contents...there wasn't much gas in there.

First things first, I brought the bike home and put it on the battery tender to get that battery nice and full.  It is to my understanding that this motor needs some serious cranking amps to start.  

I went out and grabbed 1.5 gallons of 93 octane gas (just in case if there was some old gas left in the tank this would "balance" out the mixture.

Attempted to start the bike.  The starter is turning and everything sounds healthy, but no fire.    Yes the carb was choked, and yes the fuel switch was set "on".

I think next I'm going to pull the plug for replacement and pull the  fuel line headed to the carb just to verify fuel is getting TO the carb.  If that doesn't work I think I'm going to pull the whole carb for a closer inspection/cleaning.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Yeah the petcock is set to on.  I tried starting it on PRI but didn't put it on there for very long.  I'll give that a try.

Thanks for the tips!

Nope - There is no off... The "off" would be on, since as long as the bike is off, there is no vaccum to be pulling gas into the carb. Res is reserve, which just hits a lower spot on the tank, but follows the same concept as On.

Being on Pri could be flooding the thing. I'm not sure if you would see any sort of overflow with it like that or not. I'm no expert on these things and have only seen what others have posted in the past.

Set the petcock to on.
Get a little bowl that will fit under the carb and open the carb drain.
Gas or no?
How much?  should be about a cup if the bowl was full.
Set the petcock to prime.
gas should flow continuously.

If you don't want to disassemble the carb and clean, get a can of seafoam, drain and fill the carb with it.  leave overnite.  drain and pour into the tank.  prime and see if she'll start.

Update:

So last night I ruled out a few possibilities and am a lot closer to figuring out the problem.  I started by pulling the fuel line feeding the carb and testing to make sure fuel flowed through the petcock.  As expected, on "ON" the fuel flowed slowly and ended up just dripping (obviously since no vacuum), and PRI flowed freely.

I took some advice and tried draining the carb.  I can only assume the screw on the right side of the bike at the bottom is for draining the carb.  NOTHING came out.  I had the petcock set to PRI all day yesterday (oops), and apparently there was nothing in the carb.  The screw was loose so there is a slight chance that maybe all the fuel just drained out the bottom, but I DOUBT it.

So moving on, I decided to pull the tank to check for spark.  I pulled the plug and it was...well...needing replacement.  I popped a brand new NGK on the wire, grounded the plug, and confirmed spark.

All signs point to a gum'd up carb.  

So I pulled the carb and a friend offered to "go through it" for me, so I'm taking him up on that offer.

On a side note, I did attempt to spray some Seafoam Deep Creep into the carb and it sounded like it fired once or twice, but I couldn't get it to do it again.  

Anywho, thanks for all the help guys, I'll keep you posted.

I think I saw on here someone reference one on ebay, try searching here and see what you can find.

I am far from a gearhead and I have not even looked at these sites.  But this thread was on our forum:

http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1252475350/0#0

Verslagen usually knows what he is talking about.  I would PM him or Lancer, myself.

Have the carb dipped in ultrasound bath for 30 mins. That's how we do it here.