1985 xj700 Maxim crank no start!!

Hello! I have had my 85 maxim xj700 for a few years now. I bought the bike from a friend and it was sitting in storage for a few years. Naturally it needed a battery, tires etc but on my first attempt to get it running I noticed the fuel petcock was damaged/leaking heavily. I had gotten the bike started up but it would only idle for roughly a minute and seem to stop receiving gas.

fast forward to now I gave this bike another go, I have taken the carbs apart 4x now and fully deep cleaned every part/cavity of each carb. I purchased a rebuild carb kit on eBay but only a few parts actually were usable. I had set the floats and bench synced. I purchased a replacement petcock and I can confirm that it flows has no issues there.

my problem is the bike will just crank and crank but no start. Carb bowls are empty and not filling with gas. I can get the bike to fire with starting fluid but it dies immediately. The throttle does absolutely nothing and it will only start in full choke but like I said dies out immediately if I’m not spraying starting fluid.

I’m lost at this point, I thought for sure with the new petcock the bike would fire up. I confirmed it’s getting spark last night. Any ideas or routes to take would be much appreciated!

 

Sometimes the Ebay parts aren't correct. Did you get new needle valves from Ebay? When it comes to the carburetor I get everything from Chacal--upper right hand corner. If you are not getting any fuel to the carbs, it has to be the petcock and/or the internal screen, or the needle valves. My guess is that there is a problem with the needle valves and/or floats. Until you get fuel in the carbs you are wasting time trying to start it. Is your petcock stock? If so, did you set it to prime to fill the carbs?

 

If you say the carb bowls are empty and not filling with gas then you skipped a step. You need to wet set the carb float levels on the bench.
The carbs need to be level and you hook up clear tubes to the drains and then look at where the gas ends up. Should be about 3mm from top edge.
If you don't get all the carbs wet set and close to each other you will have an imbalance of mixture between carbs. Simply setting float levels dry when you have carb apart is not really good enough. ONe other tip, is when you dry set the float levels look at both sides of the floats. The dry set is a pretty good method but if the floats are bent where one float is higher/lower than the other, then a one sided measurement is moot. I will make sure mine are close, then my wet set USUALLY comes out close.
You can also look at the float level while the carbs are on the bike and you are on the center stand, but the hieght relative to the float bowl changes cause they are on an angle. The height is based on the center of the carb not the end.

Attached is a photo of me wet setting on a bench with the rubber bands holding the clear hose.
Then attached are 2 more photos of me looking at level while carbs mounted on bike.
I drew a straight line across so you can see how the level is close to the 3mm mark but measured from the center of the carb where the emulsion tube is.
I don't we set the carb while looking at the float level while mounted on the bike, but that is a sanity check to see that everything is OK.
I had a fuel filter issue and bike was bogging down, I quickly hooked up hose to the drains to see that 2 carbs were not filling up all the way.