Carb bowl is tost?

I was cleaning the enrichment passage with a #78 drill bit and it BROKE OFF! Arggghhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Is it worth taking to a machine shop to see if they can drill it out?

 

Probably not. You can't drill out a drill with another drill unless it's carbide.

 

Don't know if I'd give up yet...let this thread age a little...see if you get some clever answers from some who have faced a similar situation.

 

As a tool maker I have a pretty good idea what I'm talking about. You might be able to just tap it on your bench to dislodge it, a #78 isn't going to have much of a bite.

 

Ok, I will try to give it a few gentle "whacks" on the bench in the morning after the wife and kids are awake.

Thanks

 

What about a little epoxie on the part that broke off so you "glue" it back togeather and gently work it out.

Or bake the float bowl in the oven and get it hot so the metal expands before you wack it on the bench.

 

just a couple of thoughts....

1. if their is a neck on the area at the beginning of where the bit goes in, can you cut about 1/4 of an inch of it away so that the end of the bit is exposed and you can get vise grips around it...?

2. punch with concave end, punch it out gently from other side

3. take it to machine shop, see if they have an idea what to do

4. call it toast and tell us the year and make of bike and carb, some of us somewhere must have an old or extra one...

 

The #78 hole is at the bottom of another long hole.

Banging it does not shake it loose. It wedged in layers of crud most likely.

Just eBay'd a set of carbs for $32 delivered. I just want the #4 bowl for now.

This time I will use a guitar string.

 

Drip some carb cleaner or denatured alcohol down the hole. If you're lucky, it might soften the junk up enough to get the drill and the crud out. Work some in from both sides, drip some from the top and fill the bowl with some, a little capillary action might be your friend. At our machine shop we have a machine called a Current EDM Drill. It doesn't drill by standard method, it uses electric current and a copper electrode. So yeah, it could be gotten out, but it's probably a $50 problem. What type of carb is the base to? Likely someone has one for you.

 

three cylinders will drag that one along till it gets warm enough to fire then it doesn't matter, don't let it stop ya from riding
if it comes loose it'll just lay there, put that bowl on the outside so you don't have to pull the rack to change it, should you find another one

 

As a possibility, if you can keep working at it with squirty carb cleaner you may manage to loosen the gunk around it.

Then use an airline to blast it out. If you don't have access to an airline, then if you're lucky an ordinary pump with one of those narrow connectors (for small air beds ?) that they come with just might do.

When you say the enrichment system, you mean that low speed running jet in the carb bowl assembly ?

Good luck.

Mind you, as others have said, float bowls are not hard to come by (I've got spares for the 550) but the bikes ru with these jets blocked, it just affects starting, fuel consumption and low speed smmoth running; which sounds a lot but is not life threatening, for you or the bike.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions, guys.
I tried some of them and in the end it was a simple decision to sacrifice a bowl from the parts bike.