Hi All,
New Member here and learning a lot. I have 2002 Midnight Venture with less than 8000 miles. She still has the original tires. Below is a picture.
Lately she has been been doing nothing much beyond sitting in the garage collecting cobwebs. At one point several months ago I brought a new battery and went to start it up. It did not start and there was fuel leaking from the carb overflows. I am in SW Florida and and we have 10% ethanol in our gas and I'm figuring that did me in. Thanks to the great article from Freebird:
http://www.venturerider.org/forum/showthread.php?t=7830
I got the carbs off and cleaned up. Now the bike runs great and idles great. I had them on and off about 8 times before I finally got it right. On the last attempt I looked through one of the pilot jets and realized the tiny pinhole was a bit smaller than the rest. No amount of blowing would clear it. I have a carb cleaning tool that has wires in various diameters. I poked the smallest one through a good pilot jet and felt no resistance. I then poked it through the one with the smaller pinhole and felt resistance. I pushed it through and then blew it out again. I could *see* some crud fly out of it. After that it finally idled OK.
Only issue is that I somehow ended up with a left over screw that I *think* is from the bike. Probably from the area around the middle of the bike because I also replaced the fuel filter and checked out the fuel pump which turned out to be OK. There is a picture of the screw. It is a philips head and about 3/4 inch long with a washer. If anybody recognizes it and knows where it goes, I would appreciate it if you could let me know.
Since I got so much from this forum already, I would like to contribute something. One of the warnings in dealing with these carbs is to not lose the tiny O-Ring in the edge of the bodies that gets exposed when you remove the diaphragms. Of course I lost one - perhaps it was never there. At any rate, I had a set of O-rings I picked up a while ago from Harbor Freight to fix a leaky hand held sprayer. The smallest in this set worked pretty well in the carb and I like I said, the bike is running real sweet now. There are some pics showing the O-ring set and the label. Your biggest problem will be what to do with the other 381 o-rings in the set. I also found that using plastic cups to protect the intake while the carbs were off worked pretty well.
Thanks again Freebird for the great article. I probably would not even have tried this without it as a guide. After about the 4th time taking them on and off, I was able to do it in about 10 minutes. First time is always hardest!