carburation issues with my bandit

[Hooli]

Being a dodgy bodging twat I'd have been looking for an old pen to nick the spring out of & cut to size. That worked when I lost a similar spring off the side of a carb on my RF600.

[froudy]

With that spring missing from the carb linkage you were correct in saying that you couldn't balance the carbs..Nightmare!
Bandit carbs aren't too bad to get in and out once you get used to them..Main tip is remove throttle cables from twist grip end and NOT from the carbs themselves.

Glad you're sorted now.

PS. Make sure you leave fuel tap on Run position and not Prime. If either the tap diaphragm or carb float valves are worn it can end up leaking fuel into engine and causing it to "Hydrolock" which isn't good! It's a common problem with bandits.

[Snapey]

Bandit carbs? Nightmare? ..... definitely, or am I blaming the carbs for a bigger issue?

I had flooding like you wouldn't believe but new O rings & float adjustment sorted that with the carbs. So I start the bike without the air filter & it idles beautifully. Give it a rev & the slides are all working well but then it starts to backfire & blow smoke according to my son who was watching. I didn't see the smoke but I suspect it was black from over fuelling as at that time fuel started pouring out of the breather in to the air box. It appears I have some serious blow by.

I wonder how hard it is to fit a 1402 lump in to a Bandit frame?

[Hooli]

Why would blow by make the carbs flood?

In my (limited) experience, a quick check for blow by is to unscrew the oil cap. If it's blown off with the engine running then you've got blow by. I worked on a CG 125 once that'd lift the cap about 3" at idle (the dipstick kept it in line) and blow it several foot away when revved.

[froudy]

It wont be blow by. Guarantee it'll be a stuck float. Bandit carbs can be a total ball ache at times.

Just to eliminate fuel tap diaphragm fault..Pull the feed pipe off the tap and no fuel should flow in the Run position. If it drips or flows fuel  you'll need a rebuild seal kit.

[Snapey]

The fuel is gravity fed from a can attached to my vacuum gauges. The carbs aren't flooding. The fuel is entering the air box via the breather tube at a rapid rate.

[Del]

The fuel is gravity fed from a can attached to my vacuum gauges. The carbs aren't flooding. The fuel is entering the air box via the breather tube at a rapid rate.

I had the same issue the other day - the float was jammed and not shutting the fuel off and was pissing out of the black pipe as well as spitting back through the carbs into the air filter box - carbs off and as Froudy says there not hard to remove - stripped cleaned and rest the float heights added missing spring - mixture screws set at 2 turns was a mare to get idling and grey smoke everywhere but after balancing the carbs its running as sweet as

[froudy]

The fuel is gravity fed from a can attached to my vacuum gauges. The carbs aren't flooding. The fuel is entering the air box via the breather tube at a rapid rate.

If that's the case, then one or more float valves aren't seated properly.

[Hooli]

Yup, I'd go with needles not seating properly too, it's all that makes sense.

[Snapey]

Thanks for the feedback fellas. Now I've got a manual to go by hopefully I'll get it right this time.

[Hooli]

The tiniest bit of dirt will stop them seating, good luck.

[DP1400]

Out of interest, i`ve just sold my mint, 12000mls standard K3 1200, following a nightmarish 3 months trying to get it to run properly again following an 18month lay-up in my (heated) garage. I`d left fuel in the tank & carbs which everyone i spoke to suggested that to be the problem. Having stripped out the carbs to find they were as clean as new inside and all the seals were fine i refitted them to find a fuel leak! Being lazy i didn`t bother replacing the gaskets. Big mistake. So off they came again!  Following the rebuild the bike still ran really badly at low revs to a point it was dangerous.
In the knowledge that the carbs were perfect, it dawned on me that the problem was elsewhere. A change of plugs didn`t help so i checked the HT leads - in fact i removed the caps and snipped 5mm off each in case any had started corroding. Eureka, the bike ran like new from that point......in real terms, a five minute fix!
My point being, check out the simple stuff before spending hours looking for a problem that doesn`t exist!!

[Snapey]

Issue sorted ... I hope once the repair kits are fitted.

No wonder the breather was spewing fuel in to the air box. It had nowhere else to go because the sump was full of it from the carburettors flooding. I filled a 10L bucket plus over a litre spilled from an engine that has a 4.5L oil capacity. That's a pretty serious flush that will need a few oil changes to clear. Hopefully that fuel & oil mix hasn't damaged the motor.

I fitted a few O rings I had but they're probably not petrol friendly so repair kits are on order that I hope will end my woes. One lesson I've learnt from this is to know where 'reserve' and 'prime' are on the petcock. I thought I had it on 'reserve' but being on 'prime' the leaking carbs allowed fuel to enter the sump. Shame they're not like my Hondas where the fuel escapes via an overflow pipe if flooding & you can see it so you know of the problem.

[froudy]

@Snapey
This is such a common occurrence on Bandits. It comes up nearly every day on the fb Bandit pages I'm on. Its vital to keep the fuel tap on Run and not Prime or Reserve. Even if the fuel tap is on Run, if the tap diaphragm springs a leak, coupled with faulty/dirty or worn float valves it will dump the contents of the fuel tank into the engine as yours did. If you don't spot this and try starting it while hydro locked it can twist the crank and destroy the engine.
Just drain the fuel oil mix from the sump and leave sump and filler cap open for a couple of days to clear it. Fit new oil filter and fresh oil and it should be fine.

[Irish in Oz]

A lot of carbs have an O ring around the needle seat they crack and the fuel bypasses the float needle on the outside causing flooding. the needle seats are push in retained by a clip.