K&L, Keyster vs Mikuni, OEM

I’m getting ready to buy some carb parts - specifically needle valves and seats.

OEM yahama/ mikuni needle valves with seats are about $30 each. K&L or keyster are about $15 each.

Has anyone had issues with the aftermarket brands listed above?

Thanks!

 

I guess I’ll be the guinea Pig

I just bought a carb rebuild kit from K&L which includes the needle valve and seats. I’ll report back..

 

I've only used a K&L kit in an old farm bike which worked ok, normally for any of my good bikes I always buy genuine

 

I had a 650 Turbo that has Mikuni carburetors. When it came to me it had aftermarket float needle valves and a flooding problem. After a couple of weeks of frustration the problem was found to be the droop limiting tangs on the floats due to the needle valves being slightly smaller in diameter than OEM. Being smaller allowed the needles to not be square in the seat and properly seal off the fuel flow. An adjustment fixed the problem but be aware that there are differences between aftermarket parts for Mikuni and OEM. No, I do not know what brand those needles were but were not OEM and appeared the same as Chacal's aftermarket parts.

 

Well shoot. This isn’t looking good..

 

Not so bad..... it only took 3 weeks of trying to wet set the fuel levels and a few hours of internet search time to get it fixed with the aftermarket needles. Then, when fixed, ran great. It can be done, just be aware of the issues. Don't let your Mikuni carb float needles droop too low. Simple....eventually.

 

You knocked some sense into me
I just bought five Yamaha OEM Needle Valve sets 25G-14107-23

I have three racks of mikuni BS30’s so all these parts will eventually go to good use.

For any eBay shoppers out there I got $10 off my $100+ order using paypal10 - also had to use PayPal as my payment source.

 

I bought four NOS OEM needle valve kits from eBay. Unfortunately , one had previously been opened and was missing the O-ring.




So I bought another kit that had the same Yamaha part number but was obviously newer. Oddly the bail on the newer needle valve was different from the three NOS kits I purchased previously. Check out the picture below. Sorry for the quality:


I’ve already installed the new needle valves /seats and they solved my “sticky float” problem.

At some point I’m going to try out the K&L rebuild kit on my other carb rack. It’ll be interesting to see how it performs and stands up to time compared to OEM

 

I’m in the process of rebuilding my extra carb rack. I found this video today and I wanted to share.

The host cleans the needle valve seat my putting a q-tip into the chuck of a drill with a bit of metal polish. I bet the wooden stalk q-tips would work even better