After reading tons of threads with sometimes conflicting advice I'm hoping for a current-best-thinking summary of how to go about upgrading my wife's S-40.  We have gathered together the parts and are hoping to find a day off together to grit our teeth and tear the bike apart, put in the upgrades and, hopefully, put it together and find that it not only runs, but runs better than before.

The bike:  2008 S-40 with 20,000 miles.  We live and ride at sea level.

The carb:  brass plug on idle mixture screw removed by prior owner.  We did the white spacer removal (two washers in its place) per http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1431489495/6#6

Status:  Still backfires under engine braking and upon shutdown.  Wife pulls the choke out for a few seconds before shutdown as a workaround.

The parts:  Jet kit from Lancer, Raptor petcock, Dyna muffler.

•  Can anyone point to a good link with pictures for carb cleaning, preferably the S40's?

•  Given sea level riding and the new Dyna muffler, what size jets and where would be best?

•  Can anyone point to a good link with pictures for the re-jetting?

•  Given that we already removed the white spacer and replaced it with two washers, and given the cleaned, re-jetted carb and Dyna muffler, should we change the number of washers?

•  There appears to be nothing wrong with the stock petcock, but after reading about problems with it and the Raptor upgrade I ordered one just to try to make everything right in one go.  Any difficulties to install, or is it just remove and replace?

I know I'm kind of asking to be spoon fed all this how-to, but we're not wrenches and it's difficult to pull all of it together from numerous threads, especially when some offer conflicting opinions.

The the most important data points we need are which jets where and how many washers so we hopefully get it right the first time.  Also, a good carb tuning tutorial once everything is back in place would help.  

I say we're not wrenches, but we do have the tools and some basic ability, and with good instructions/Youtube videos we can usually puzzle things out.

I've been wrenching on stuff for over forty years. I would never, on my best day, even dreamed of doing all that you're considering in a day. A weekend, maybe.

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You'll always get conflicting opinions, nobody starts at the same place.
You'll just have to be prepared to try different options.
This is seat of the pants tuning, you'll need to try this and that and pick what's best.  not happy with that?  find somebody with a dynometer or at least an air/fuel meter.