Neil, carbs are 99% metal, and I can see no reason to throw away metal. Just clean your carbs and put them back on. After 10 years you may well have other issues with the bike, but the carbs should be serviceable. If they sat dry for years, chances are good they will leak now even if they were good when you got them. It's not a big deal.
There are lots of good carb cleaning information on the Internet. Watch YouTube videos. That's how I got started. How difficult can it be? Remember, once the carbs are off, you don't have to put them back on to find out if they still leak. You can do that at your work bench. Hold them upright and put some gasoline in with a funnel or syringe. Where do they leak from? Each bowl typically has a drain valve. Are they all closed? Take a screwdriver and make sure they're all closed. Just this weak I dumped gasoline on the transmission of a bike because a bowl drain valve wasn't completely closed. It happens. Otherwise, carbs will most typically leak at the tip of the needle valve. I'm attaching a picture. These are $5 each and are easily changed. That's the first thing you change, and it could well be all you need to replace. Carbs may also leak where the bowls meet the carb bodies. I've never encountered it, but it's possible. Remember that auto parts stores sell gasket material. If need be, rub some oil on the sealing face of a carb bowl and set it on some gasket material, then cut it out to match. Leak fixed. The most problematic place for them to leak is where the gas goes from carb to carb. This means you have to break the rack. If you do this, take lots of pictures before you remove anything, and take more as you go. The tubes between carbs typically have O-rings at the ends to seal them, and these go bad with age, as any rubber will. These are at the point of the red circles I've drawn in the image. I was able to use O-rings from the nitrile set they sell at Harbor Freight for $5. You use 8 and you have about 100 others left over. The only other place I can think that they might be leaking is the filler tube from the gas tank. A leak here should be obvious, as is the fix. Sooner or later, your carbs will no longer leak. This doesn't mean they'll be ride ready, but they might if they were clean when you got them but just dried out. People don't throw out their toilets when they leak, do they? No reason to discard their carbs, either. If I can do it, you can, too. Go for it. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Nighthawk Motorcycle Lovers!" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/nighthawk_lovers. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
