Some of you might remember my "Matchless tribute" project from 8 or 9 years ago (not 13 as I thought).  Now 76 I'm ready to sign over my Harley to my son, but not ready to quit riding. So I picked up an '88 Savage with under 5k miles on it, for under $600 on Marketplace. It's a great project bike but will be kept mostly stock this time.  It was not running so I started a minor teardown to check it out. I decided to remove both side engine covers so I could  polish them easier and got a big surprise - when I loosened the gen cover about a gallon of gas came out. Yes it still had the original shutoff valve so a new Raptor one is on order.  I will also be replacing gaskets and the shifter and drive sprocket seals as it has a significant oil leak.

Petcock makes sense.  You'll probably be cleaning and rebuilding the carb.  Obviously check the float valve and float too.

On the bright side, the gas probably removed any sludge in the crankcase.  

Well, I just turned 70 this past December and intend to keep riding as long as I can hold up the bike.    

I had an issue with a full sump of fuel but I had already done the raptor so...

It turned out to be the seal on the float valve body in the carb. A few wraps of teflon tape fixed the problem. That was about 8 yrs ago. No problem since.

A rather strange problem, wouldn't you say?

The bike came with a receipt from last July showing shop repair including a "carb rebuild".  It sounds like an inspection is in order.  I'll do that after I get the electrical gremlins solved.  I suddenly started blowing the main fuse.  I removed the seat and tank, and unplugged every connection I could find.  With a fresh fuse in place, I started plugging them back in until it popped again.  It was the plug under the tank for the RH handlebar switches.  I thought I had narrowed it down until I noticed 7 wires at the plug but only 6 at the switches, and wires having current flow that shouldn't.  After slicing open the sheathing I found that 3 wires are joined together inside the sheathing, which therefore sends current from the orange wire back upline to the plug and who knows where beyond that.  This is making it much more difficult to solve since the wiring diagram I downloaded here doesn't show anything like that, or match the wire colors I'm finding.  And it is all original, unmodified wiring.

I should probably tie off this discussion. In my general going-over of the bike I noticed a rather floppy RH front turn signal, so tightened the screw on it. I didn't realize that someone had replaced the screw with one a half inch too long, and I had run it right through the wires. After fixing that, setting the float level, and replacing the 1988 tires and brakes, it is now running and looking great.

I appreciate the help found here, in particular the tech pages. I just did the speedo rattle fix, and while it is still noisy, it is much better than before.