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As the title says, I just got my first bike. It's a '79 Honda CB750K LTD. That's the 10th anniversary edition. It's been garaged all or most of its life, and the paint and chrome are in pretty good shape, with a few scratches and a small dent in the tank from being dropped on its left side at some point.
Here's my problem: it hasn't been run in 5 years. The floats seem to be frozen in the carbs. I was told that when the petcock was set to run, fuel flowed out the carbs.
Now for my question: rebuild; or remove, douse with carb cleaner, and reinstall.
The shops around here are in the middle of summer rush, and don't want to touch it. The Honda dealer wants LOTS of money. I'm mechanically inclined, but would like to avoid a rebuild if I can. Would carb cleaner until the floats move be a feasible way to get things going?

*I already posted the preceding in another part of the forum, but decided this one was more appropriate. Mods please delete/move/merge at will*

In all honesty, you should just pull them and clean them yourself. It's not too hard to do. Just get lots of carb cleaner and compressed air and really clean all of the small passages. As an alternative, you could always pull the carbs off yourself and take them to a shop to have them cleaned.


If the floats are stuck, believe me, it's gonna take alot more cleaning than just freeing stuck floats.

Make sure you get all the passages in the jets clear otherwise you'll be doing it again. Best thing to do is let the jets sit in berryman's carb cleaner over night then run compressed air through them. It's available at any autoparts store in a gallon paint can (though the brand may be different). Also, when spraying through the narrow passages on the carb body, stick the end of the aerosol carb cleaner straw through a small vaccum plug and push that against the passage. That will seal your end of the hole and put more pressure on blockages.

Good luck

Thanks. I don't have access to an air compressor, think that canned air stuff would have enough oomph?
Here's a pics for thanks

HOLY BEJEEPERS!! That's a hell of a nice first bike. From the pic, that things looks spotless. Good find!

Not quite spotless, it's been laid down once I think, it has a small dent on the left side of the tank, and a few paint scratches. I'm very happy with it for what I paid, just can't wait to get it going.

Next Question: If I've got the carb out of the bike already, and am cleaning as per the Clymers tech data, should I go ahead and just get rebuild kits? I'm asking because I don't know if the rebuild requires any additional dissasembly above and beyond the cleaning.

And now another picture

holy big pics batman....

You might be able to take your carbs off and bring them to a small engine repair shop, they prolly could put them In a dip tank, which would clean it up a bit better then just spraying the bejesus out of them with carb cleaner.

Yeah, I know the pics are :ahem: large, but I really don't know how to resize them/don't want to go to the effort to figure it out. Have another pic
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v445/ ... CN1258.jpg

photobucket allows your to resize via edit button above the pic. just know that if you do so, you'll have to relink here. maybe future pics, I find the 50% is just right, it wont show right away, but it does resize it.