Hey everybody,
Iam new to this forum and also a new owner of a Savage 1997 that i bought a couple of weeks ago. I have been working on the bike to make it a bobber. Today i went to take the tank of. I was following the Clymer manual and said take of the vacuum hose. But the problem was that the vacuum hose were only attached to carb then just a dead end (open). And the weird thing is that the previus owner has plugged the end at the petcock with a screw. So my question here is if anybody knows why the previus owner might have done this? Should i just leave it? The bike ran ok the last time i tested it, exept for major backfiring. Could this be related? (Sorry for my bad english)
/Henrik

Sounds like he might have had some problems with the vacuum petcock and instead of replacing it, just plugged the vacuum line and ran it on prime.

If your petcock has on, res, pri on it, it's the stock vacuum petcock.  If it has on, off, res, it's an aftermarket petcock.

The two hoses from the side of the carb that just dead end are vent hoses for the float bowl. The should not be plugged.  The vacuum line connects right by the rubber intake manifold on the right (brake pedal) side of the bike.  If the petcock's plugged, the vacuum connector there should be plugged as well.

Check out the tech section.  There's an index and there's all sorts of good information about the petcock and what to do to fix it.

Backfiring could be carb related.  Probably not petcock related.  It is usually an air leak in the exhaust system that causes lots of backfiring.

Glad to have you out here.  Be safe and have a great time on your new bike.

You can.  It won't hurt the bike.  you won't have any reserve though so be sure you get gas before running out.  You should repair the petcock.  If the vacuum diaphram was causing problems for the PO, you might still have some problems out of it.

Check this out http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1251932429/1 it might be helpful.  It's how to check your petcock.

http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1181745927 This is the index for the tech section.  Everything you ever wanted to know about your Savage/S40.