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Ok, so I'm guessing the trip back shook some things loose, so when I get home there's a puddle of gas under the bike when I try to start it. It looks like this thing here:



Had come loose from something and was dangling and dripping fuel down here:




And my mom's "boyfriend" or whatever he is now, being the super mechanic he is (duh, where's the kickstart? Back in the 50s all the bikes had kickstarts), attaches that hose to the battery drainoff hose, which may have caused other problems because I didn't realize it until this morning.

So, I've gone through my clymer's manual, and I havn't seen where that hose is supposed to go, yet. Any clues? I'm guessing it may have some reason as to why my bike won't start.

Oh, and this is all taken from the left side of the bike.

Thats looks to me like the crankcase vent hose. If I'm right, it should go from your airbox (where it is connected already) to a vent on the crankcase somewhere (on my XS400, its on the right side of the crankcase) I would IMMEDIATLY disconnect it from the battery vent, you stand a chance of getting gas into the battery, ruining it, maybe even causng an explosion hazzard.

And, if its dripping fuel, then you have a carb cleaning ahead of you. Your floats are probably stuck and its causing gas to overflow the carbs and run into the airbox, and therefore down that vent tube.

Don't worry, carb cleaning isn't that bad, I kinda enjoyed it!

MrShake wrote:Thats looks to me like the crankcase vent hose. If I'm right, it should go from your airbox (where it is connected already) to a vent on the crankcase somewhere (on my XS400, its on the right side of the crankcase) I would IMMEDIATLY disconnect it from the battery vent, you stand a chance of getting gas into the battery, ruining it, maybe even causng an explosion hazzard.

And, if its dripping fuel, then you have a carb cleaning ahead of you. Your floats are probably stuck and its causing gas to overflow the carbs and run into the airbox, and therefore down that vent tube.

Don't worry, carb cleaning isn't that bad, I kinda enjoyed it!

I disconnected it this morning the moment I noticed it was connected to the battery vent hose.

Oh, and I found out on the GS forums that it's supposed to be dangling, so now I get to order a rebuild kit (may as well do the jet replacement at the same time) and play around with that. I have a nice and easy picture show to help me clean the carbs on the GS forums.

yep. its easy. I had the exact same bike, including the year.

as im sure they told you, just do one carb at a time, and if possible, bring the carbs inside and lay them out on a table where you wont loose any small parts. You shouldnt even need to take the carbs off the rack.

ahh memories. Here's mine:




actually it was my ex girlfriends. We ended up selling it on ebay because it had electical gremlins we never could get figured out. When it ran though it ran great.

take off them stinky carbs! brign them to a small engine shop and get them dipped. shouldnt cost more then 50 bucks. put some new plugs in, new fluids and filters and see what happens when you crank it over. also check for spark.

Or you can buy the stuff to dip them yourself for $12 at an autoparts store. It's the best way to clean a set of carbs but you'll want to make sure you get all the rubber pieces out