Carburetor Rebuilding

I couldn't reach an agreeable deal with the original owner of the bike for his set of VM29 smoothbores, so I decided to rebuild the stockers.

First I pulled off the float bowls to get an idea of the condition. Actually pretty good, so this should be easy.

I stripped the carbs down, removing the factory paint that sealed off the idle and mixture screws. I noted the number of turns for each one so that it would be easy to install them in the same place.

The carbs and rack came apart rather easy - no nasty gummed up fuel or overly bad corrosion was obvious.

I rebuilt each carb in turn - first I soaked the body, cap and float bowl in carb cleaner for 20 minutes, then gave them a quick wash with water. Finally I cleaned the hardware with solvent and gave all the parts a good looking over.

To reassemble, I added new orings to the drain, needle jet, idle screw, mixture screw and choke plunger. I had to get new gaskets for the float bowl and slide cover, since the originals tore when I disassembled them. The float valves were in good shape and didn't need to be replaced. Same for the needle and jet - all four sets were in great, lightly used condition. This bike would have been a perfect runner before it's 25-year slumber.

The stock carbs have a funny molded fuel feed tee, which has a tendency to leak. I used my favorite gasket sealer - Hylomar from the UK - to seal them. Hylomar is allegedly resistant to fuel, but I only used a tiny smear just in case.

The carbs went back in after a struggle - now I've still got to clean out the tank and rebuild the petcock, but the fuel system is getting closer to completion by the minute.