Over the past couple of weeks I’ve completely rebuilt my carbs. They were fairly dirty, but not too terrible all things considered. My rebuild kit included a new gasket for the bowls and new plugs for the fuel intake. Since it was my first time, a friend helped me to do the process.

One of the problems that I had was that one of the vacuum pistons stuck in its slider. I also had some fuel leakage when I bought the bike, so I’m hoping that this will fix that. There was a general amount of gunk all over everything, and one of the vacuum piston rings was broken because whoever had taken it apart before (it had quite obviously been taken apart before and many of the screw heads were stripped) had neglected to ensure the edge of the diaphragm was fully seated inside the seat. I patched it up with some liquid gasket sealer. I looked at replacing it, but it costs $150 to replace. At that point, I could simply purchase an entire set of carbs and pull the vacuum piston out of it.

The jets were fairly dirty, but they cleaned up well. Hopefully they’re in good enough condition that I won’t have to replace any of them. I also removed the plugs over the idle mixture adjustment screws so that I can fine tune the adjustment later. I’ve heard that they aren’t always perfectly adjusted from the factory.

I’ve been wanting to get 4-way flashers on my bike (it doesn’t have any stock), so I ordered a ZX600 left control cluster to replace the stock cluster. The switching to 4-way flashers is done inside the control. Apparently, this is supposed to be plug-and-play.

It’s not, at least not on this model. I know there’s an electrical change in the ’94 model, so I imagine at that point the harness matches what I have. Fortunately, Kawasaki didn’t change the wire colors in the harness, so all I had to do was take out the wires and re-pin the connector so that it matched up with the existing harness. For anyone trying to do this themselves, note that there is an blue/orange wire in the stock wiring harness that is not in the ZX600 harness, nor does it connect to anything on the bike side of the harness. It drove me nuts when my headlight didn’t work even after plugging it in correctly (turns out the switch needed some cleaning). The wire is from the ’86 and ’87 models which had a reserve lighting device. This device would automatically switch the headlight to the other filament if one burned out. It isn’t found on any of the other models, but it seems that Kawasaki thought it was cheaper to continue including the wire in the harness.

After installing the harness correctly and cleaning the switch, everything worked as expected except the 4-way flasher. Left and right worked correctly, though I noticed I could heard a very rapid clicking noise just before the blinkers started blinking. When I tried to use the 4-way button, all I could hear was a very rapid clicking and the lights all came on to maybe 30% brightness and would not blink. This didn’t make any sense, as the bike is supposed to have a solid state flasher and it was acting like a mechanical flasher. Either way, the flasher was clearly not helping so I replaced it with a digital one. Everything works great!

I took apart the old flasher and, lo and behold, it’s a mechanical flasher! The new flasher will work with LEDs, so that’s nice for future upgrades.

One of the problems I was having with my bike was that the throttle was binding somewhere. When I would engage the throttle, it wouldn’t automatically return to the start point. I wasn’t sure why this was as both throttle cables seemed to be in good condition. I had lubed them before I put the carbs back on. Once I got the carbs situated, I began reattaching the various control cables. When I put the throttle cables back on, the problem was worse! I also noticed, though, that there was very little slack in either cable, and the failsafe cable was especially tight. As soon as I disconnected that cable, the throttle worked perfectly. I adjusted the main throttle cable to have the right amount of slack, then reattached the failsafe cable and adjusted it to have slightly more slack. It’s perfect now, so it seems having too much tightness in the failsafe cable was causing the binding of the throttle control.

I also added a fuel filter in case any rust decides to come back in my tank. The cable is too long right now, so I’ll have to shorten it once I put the tank back on. I replaced the rear fairing and grab bar, but won’t put anything else back on the bike until I get it outside. It’s ready to come outside now; the only maintenance left to do is to sync the carbs, adjust my idle speed, change the oil and the coolant, and adjust my headlight. All this needs to be done outside and the bike needs to be running to do it properly. I should be getting it outside tomorrow, actually, which will be a lot of fun. Getting it up those stairs will be no joke.

Here’s the gallery. I took a lot of photos of my carbs, hopefully that will help someone!

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Posted in Self

Tags: EX250F, Motorcycle, Ninja 250R, Project