I've been a bad bike owner for the last few years as I haven't raced that much. About three years ago the 250 sat for a year. Didn't start it often enough and give her the obligatory ride around the block, so she ran like shit. Cleaned the carbs, put in fresh fuel, and she was fine. When I cleaned the carbs the diaphragms were significantly deformed, so I grabbed some "new" ones off my parts bike. I started it and rode it here and there for a year, but it has sat for the last 14 months. Put in a fresh battery, drained the fuel, and some new plugs. No dice. Won't start. It tried to show a sign of life for a few seconds when I held the starter for 20 seconds, but that was short lived. Couple of questions: 1) I assume the next step is to pull the carbs and clean them tomorrow 2) Am I reading/recalling correctly that there is no fuel shut off on the pet cock? When I pulled the tank tonight, all of the remaining fuel spewed out. However it was set on prime, and if I understand correctly it will contain fuel if I put take it off prime unless the petcock is activated via vacuum. 3) If I have to replace these diaphragms again....are the really $125? A quick look online leads me to believe they are far from cheap.
Leaving your petcock on prime for a year probably filled the motor with fuel. Smell your oil and change it if it smells like gas
Good call, and I should probably change the oil regardless. However unfortunately I'm not quite there yet... I took the carbs off to clean them today, and as feared the diaphragms were "deformed". Can't even get them back on. Any way to salvage them, or am I out $250 for a new set? Any place i can get them for less than $125ish each? TIA for all of the help. Frustrating day, and incredibly mad at myself for doing this twice.
I have an SV that rarely gets a whole tank of fuel ran through it, per season. I keep AV100LL and Sea Foam in the tank and never have problems with it running. It’s an ‘02 and, for the first time, I just replaced the seats, needles, and petcock, this last summer. The carb interiors were spotless. If you can buy 100% pure gas, race gas, or aviation gas, I’d suggest going that route and adding 1/2 can of Sea Foam.
After sitting for a few hours, they seem to have gone back to shape. Reassembled. going for a bicycle ride, will put the bike back together tonight.
Think I'm making progress, but I cannot get the airbox back on the carbs to save my life. I don't have a ton of experience with it - until I moved to "WERA Land" I used pod filters as they were legal with CMRA. Is there some trick to getting this thing back on?
Brand new boots are 20 bucks and will make it stupid easy to get back on with how soft and supple new ones are. Small amount of money well spent to eliminate the headache of making old crusty hard boots try to work. Or are you referring to getting the entire box back in?? From what I remember with my old 250 I had to remove the rear wheel altogether and snake through the back to get the airbox in/out.
