Gyrobob
Serious Thumper
   
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Posers ain't motorcyclists
Posts: 2571
Newnan, GA
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We did the carbs next,.. combining carb rebuild kits, and the stuff that came with the RYCA parts. One bike had 14,000 mi and probably never had the carb touched. All the phillips head screws were undamaged anyway, and they were really hard to unscrew. The other bike was two years newer and only had 4000 mi, but its screws seemed welded on as well.
We studied a lot of the threads on carb rebuilding and tuning -- very very helpful!
We got the rebuild kits from Tike's Cycle Parts on ebay. Great place, instant shipping. The folks were real helpful in verifying that the kit works on 2002 Savages even though it is labeled to only go up to 2001. $12.99 each for the kits, with a shipping discount for multiple items. 
Getting ready to operate. Cleanliness is a biggy. 
We took lots of pics to make sure we knew what it looked like before we took it apart. 
The first carb had lots of muck in the float bowl. (so much for the screen on the petcock, eh?) 

These screws were welded in, it seemed. We were lucky enough to recognize the phillips head deforming before we obliterated it. We finally shocked them loose like the transient enrichment valve screws shown a few pics below. 
The famous white spacer. We replaced it with two of the thin RYCA-supplied washers. That thing Jud is holding in his right hand can go back in in lots of wrong ways. incorrectly quite easily. Make sure you note how the holes line up and which way the protrusion (depression?) (dimple?) sits before you disassemble it. 
Treat the diaphragm very gently. 
Removing the plug covering the idle mixture adjuster. Once you drill a small hole (1/16”?) just put a really small self-tap screw in the hole and yank the plug out. Now the idle mixture can be adjusted. 
The next two pics show how we shocked the screws loose in lots of places on these carbs. The carb is firmly (but not crushingly) held in a vise lined with soft aluminum. Use a flat punch or drift to knock each screw back and forth a tiny bit. As soon as you see any movement, you can unscrew it. Go easy. 

Transient enrichment valve diaphragm. Fortunately both of ours looked nice. Not very clean, though. This thing can affect the popping/backfiring on deceleration so often discussed here. 
Brown cakey stuff underneath the diaphragm. 
The next three pics show a nearly microscopic hole in the diaphragm cover that goes from the slot in the cover to the diaphragm compartment. The 14,000 mi bike had muck in this hole. The other bike looked clean, but we ran some carb cleaner and some thin strands of copper wire through the hole, then blew it out with compressed air. Amazing that this hole, if dirty, can cause the bike to backfire,.. maybe. 


We won’t know for a while, but we feel good about getting the carbs cleaned well, and put back together properly. At least we didn’t have any parts left over.
Added comment September 2012: The carbs on both bikes work perfectly,... both bikes started right up on the first try. (well, on one of them we needed to adjust the compression release,.. it was not letting the exhaust valve seat completely.) Anyway, the carb work we did paid off. No backfires other than the typical moderate popping and gurgling during decel. Jud's always goes POP!! when he shuts it off, mine sounds like a muffled cough sometimes when shut off.
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