Two steps forward, two steps back.

Perhaps I was a bit optomistic about this past weekend. Things didn't work out quite like I planned.
Instead of going to see Deep River on Saturday and take the Fall Foliage ride to Graves Mountain on Sunday, I spent the entirety of my weekend sorting out carb problems.

Friday:

 I installed new spark plugs and plug caps,

and put the rest of the bike back together; radiator, fan etc...

Then finished rebuilding the GL1000's carbs (for the first time).


Saturday:

The carbs were mounted on the bike, primed, and ready.

However, when I tried to start the bike I got a quick "put-put-put," like it was going to fire, and then nothing. I tried again, and the bike SPEWED fuel out the right exhaust all over the garage.
 

Apparently the Clymer's manual was very wrong about the procedure for setting the float height.
The proper way to do it isn't from the gasket surface, or the gasket. Instead, measure the float height from the lip around the edge of the gasket.

So, I removed the carburetors, re-adjusted the floats, remounted them and tried to start the bike.

Before.

The correct orientation for setting float height.

After.

Still no luck. So I ran the handy-dandy troubleshooting checklist: Spark, Fuel, Compression.
Well, cylinders 3&4 had no spark. Luckily it turned out to just be a loose wire.

At this point it was late, and I didn't want to piss off the neighbors by starting the bike
So,I decided to call it a night and try my luck in the morning.

Sunday:
I woke up, threw on some pants and, like a kid on christmas, dashed for the garage.
I hit the starter button and after a minute or so of struggling she fired a little bit.

She was having trouble starting and running so I decided to pull the carbs again to double check everything and bench sync them.

Draining float bowls again.

Double checking float heights.

The floats were all set perfectly, all the passages were clear but got blown out with compressed air anyway.
I syncronised them using a guitar string and threw them back on the bike.

Once mounted, I hit the starter button and she fired right up without hesitation!

But then, I gave it just a touch of throttle and the engine RPM's surged to 3000 and stayed there even after I let off the throttle. After a few more attempts and adjustments I couldn't fix the problem.

When I rebuilt the carbs I swapped out the slow air jets for smaller ones to enrich the idle and off-idle mix
so that the bike wouldn't have a flat spot and stumble when moving from a stop.

Hoping that this was part of my problem I decided to swap the jets out, but I thought,
"I'll be damned if I'm taking those carbs off again."

The slow air jets are pretty hard to access with the carbs still on the bike, but I had just the right tool for the job:

This photo was surprisingly hard to take.

Slow air jet removed...

...from here

Unfortunately this didn't fix the problem, so I guess I'm damned.

The only other thing I could think that might have caused the surging RPM's would perhaps be sticking slides. I pulled the carbs again, hopefully for the final time, and polished the carb slides, tops,
and bores with some 0000 Steel wool.

Only the finest for polishing my carbs!

I think this box is older than I am.

Before. Notice the scuffs.

After polishing.

I also polished the inside of the tops.

I reassembled everything Sunday night and hopefully with some luck we'll find out if this fixed it tomorrow!



...and by request I present to you, friggin' spiders:

I think he was sick of the paparazzi and decided to take his meal elsewhere.