Use a gun... ...


Test your Petcock...
here's how...
http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1251932429

Did you try Sea Foam in the gas yet?

I'm so tired of saying this...

Just turning the petcock to "prime" will not work as a test,...that test will only test for an air leak in the vacuum hose,... it will only add flow to a leaky diaphragm...  

Please read the "Test your petcock" post for instructions on how to do a proper test... it's very easy... and will rule out the petcock as the problem completely...
http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1251932429

ThumperKat it sounds like something in the carb is sticking Sea Foam will clean the jets and lube the slide and float,You start taking things apart and you will have problems.

Serobot tends to think in terms of leaky or torn rubber diaphragms (one issue of many that exist with the petcock) and he likes his "tee in the vac tube, block off the carb port, run it in Prime test because it likely is the best test to eliminate "petcock as a whole" from your list of issues.

Routy tends to think "low fuel flow due to stiff rubber" (one of the many petcock issues)

Verslagen tends to want you to go rebuild the whole thing using a rebuild kit he found for about $22 shipped

I tend to want you to yank the whole failure prone thing and stick in a simple mechanical Raptor petcock that simply doesn't have these many different failure modes (and the whole host of different performance symptoms that they cause)

We all think the petcock causes a lot of symptoms that we don't want to chase through simply to find "its the petcock again".  

By running in prime you simply get some decent gas flow temporarily that lets us know that that portion of things is working or not.   If in result you suddenly go black smoke rich or spill gasoline all over your bike from the air box, that tells us if your petcock diaphragm is split or torn.  

This too is a valid diagnostic test that tells us which part of the petcock has failed this time.  Serobot's tee test is good for eliminating "petcock as a whole" as an issue, this one lets you judge which portion has failed.  Both work.  This one is a little more brutal messy though.




Come on guys, we're making chicken soup here -- not borsch.






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Bill wants you to put seafoam in your bike to lubricate and clean your carb -- he believes seafoam has magical healing properties so he keeps telling people to put in way too much (low was 25% of the float bowl, high was "fill it up") which makes their bikes smoke some and run kinda funny.   This is good in Bill's world, but in normal reality it just fogs up the water while other folks are trying to do troubleshooting based on what the bike is doing now.

Honesty requires me to state "it worked last time", so I will.  Swacking the bowl a few times with the handle end of a big screw driver works too (and it costs a lot less and doesn't take 1.5 days) but filling up your bowl with seafoam does free up a float and needle assembly.

I'm not an additive sorta person, but w/ nothing to loose, I doubled up on seafoam in my boat motor that had a serious carb problem. I have now had it out 3 times a total of 18 hrs, and it hasn't missed a beat. I can't prove the seafoam fixed it, but it sure didn't hurt it.
Moral of the story,....don't knock Bill and his seafoam till you prove it don't work.

Yes Bill, truth is -- And it is a FACT that putting a bowl full of seafoam into a carburetor with a stuck float did unstick it.   It really did happen ....  I am a reluctant witness.

And the user did remember to drain the seafoam out; of the bowl before trying to start the bike (which was a good thing because it never would have started on 100% seafoam).

It is also a fact that a couple of good whacks with the handle end of a big screwdriver to the bottom of the carb bowl will do the same thing   (without spending 1.5 days waiting and $8 for the can of seafoam)



..... but who are we reality mongers to be injecting nasty old reality into a good seafoam story like this one?


   

Jeez, sometimes this place gets to sounding like Romper Room. In my case I had rebuilt the dam carb 3 times. And a fourth to recheck the floats. I did a rebuild kit on pet thingy, with a new vacuum line, and that didn't work either. Then I did the plugging of the vacuum source thing while running on prime. It worked. I haven't been able to afford a Raptor yet, but I've put 2,000 miles on this summer the way it is. Hey guys--whatever works go with it, but lets not condemn everyone elses methods. Some work, some don't. It's called diagnosing and testing. Sooner or later one method or another will lead to the fix. I haven't tried the Sea Foam yet either, as it is too dam expensive. But after rebuilding 3 times, you wouldn't think it would need it anyway. Nuf said. My 2 cents.