javaman wrote:Great write up!
Thanks. There is more to come. Maybe some owners will be inspired to take a closer look at how their bike works and perhaps cast a more critical eye on its maintenance. Be your bike's harshest critic.
javaman wrote:The carburetors on my GPZ is the one thing I haven't touch. I was scratching my head because the boots+carbies+boot+airbox (if seen from the left) are absolutely tight fit! So I left it alone.
Yes, it's a tight fit. Straight-fours like these tend to make carby fit/replace a tricky job. Age-hardened boots make it a bear of a job.
I still wonder how the factories assembled the bikes on production lines. Maybe the airbox went into the frame first, followed by the engine with the carbys and cables attached.
Also, I have never seen a factory shop manual show a special tool to make carby remove/refit easier.
javaman wrote:Any chance to describe this magic tool of yours?
I would show a pic but I don't have it here at the moment.
javaman wrote:is it just a plate you force the carbs/boot into?
2 plates actually. One plate goes against the engine boots, one plate goes against the airbox boots.
I dug up some sheet aluminium and cut it with tinsnips. Each piece is about 35cm by about 15cm, maybe 1 or 2mm thick.The dimensions are not critical. As long as you have enough to cover the boot holes and have enough left to grip the ally with vice grips or mole grips or similair, you are on the way.
It helps a lot to have an assistant. Shoving the carbys between the sheets take effort and you will need someone to hold the bike and/or help keep the sheets in place. You are compressing the boots on both sides. Some lube in the form of rubber grease or vaseline on both sides of each sheet helps a bit but you will still gouge the thin ally sheet a a bit, but so what.
Once the carbys are located, pull out one sheet at a time while holding the carbys in, and the carbys should drop into the boots with some minor adjustments.
I won't claim I invented this technique. I probably read it somewhere and it came back to me when the situation arose.
javaman wrote:I too had the oil cooler line touching the exhaust! Lucky I looked beneath and it was a 30-sec. fix.
Little things like this make a difference. You would not know unless you look. How many times in the past has somebody else missed that little fault that could overheat the oil and damage the engine?