New to motorcycles but jumpin right in

Alright about a month ago I bought a 1982 550 maxim for 400 bucks with about 2400 miles on it for my very first bike, the man I bought it from said it sat for way too many years. So I naturally went in and pulled the carbs, spent about 10 bucks on carb cleaner and a good 3 to 4 hours blasting away at them, I got the gunk out of the gas tank by spraying it out with water than used an old electrical tip my dad passed on to me to get most of the rust out, after that I rebuilt the petcock because that had gotten really nasty and then I sprayed out the fuel lines. Put the carb back in, remounted the tank and petcock and after about 20 minutes of adjusting the ok girl fired up. I adjusted the throttle setting so that it idled a about 1500 rpm but here's where that big "oh" factor comes in. Every time I try to come off the choke she sputters out on me. So any suggestions?

 

I didn't see you mention that you wet-set the float levels.
Idle should be 1100rpm, so that's a little high.
Did you clean pilot circuits as well?
Replace any rubber?
Break the rack apart?
Carb dip or carb spray?

 

+1 on "tskaz"

Your Pilot - Idle circuit is not working, and you need to go back in -
but before you start working again, you should read a couple looong, detailed how-to's on this site,
Search -
Church of clean
http://www.xjbikes.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=14692.html
Whole 9 Yards
http://xjbikes.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=2 ... n+own.html

 

Mikuni teardown: http://xjbikes.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=31061.html

VALVE CLEARANCE CHECK: http://xjbikes.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=14827.html

Part Deux: http://xjbikes.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=29209.html

-You need to do a better job cleaning the carbs. DO NOT submerge them in anything unless you plan on breaking the rack and replacing the throttle shaft seals.

-Accurately "wet-set" the float levels. http://www.xj4ever.com/setting%20fuel%20levels.pdf

-Do a good precise bench sync. Set your pilots at 2 3/4 turns out to start.

-Then after the valve clearances are in spec, you'll need to do your running vacuum sync with the YICS blocked.

You're off to a decent start, but you can't take shortcuts and there is a lot more to setting up the carbs than just cleaning them. You'll get there but you need to slow down, back up, and be more thorough. And keep in mind that a good vac sync will be impossible if the valves aren't in spec first.

 

Cool, thanks for the help guys I'm gunna try again this week ill let ya know how it goes

 

Also sorry about the duplicate but I'm on an iPhone and I can't figure out how to delete it on here

 

Zekiniza,

Welcome and what they ^ said.


Gary