Anyone in Southwest Florida? New bee needs help

[kentpham]

Hello all, I bought an 03 standard with 15k miles recently. I'm mechanically dumb, just love riding. The bike picks up hesitatingly, I have changed the plugs and put some seafoam in the full tank. After riding about 50 miles, it still did not pick up right away at 1st and 2nd gear but it accelerated better at 3rd, 4th and 5th gear, better but not as fast as what I have read. A couple of times, when It was running on reserve, when I got home I found the gas leaking from the first carburetor on the right hand side. A lot, actually the groove on the right engine block was filled with gas. Is there anyone in Southwest of Florida who can help me, please. Thanks guys.

[sandy]

It sounds like you have a float that's stuck open. The bike was probably laid up for a while and the carbs need a good cleaning. Maybe Trick Rick knows someone in your area to help.

[Michael K (Az.)]

http://www.valkyrieforum.com/forum/vrcc_florida.cgi

There many on the Fl. board that can and will help you. Lotsa talent inna swampland!

[Tropic traveler]

Well, I'm in north central Florida but I have had a similar problem. Back around 65,000 miles I had an episode of carb overflow on the LH middle carb. Bike ran like crap & leaked fuel like crazy, only time it smoothed out was at high RPM. Fiddled around with it in a McDonalds parking lot & got it to stop leaking. Ran fine for another 13K or so.
Fast forward to about a year later & I got a case of the dreaded hydrolock, you guessed it, from the LH middle carb. . Anyways I pulled the carb rack......


Then I pulled all the bowls & this is what I found in all of them. YUCK!! Actually the pic is AFTER I wiped some of the crap out with my finger!


LH middle carb was the only one leaking & caused the hydrolock {which BTW did no damage other than put lots of gas in the oil, WHEW!} but I cleaned them all. I replaced the float, needle & seat on the offending carb, replaced the failed petcock & added a fuel filter then put it back together. Didn't even have to replace the bowl gaskets. I did find rust in the fuel tank & I had it cleaned out & coated while I had it down too. Obviously what happened was tank rust plus just plain old dirt & gook built up over the years and slipped past the broken petcock, held the LH mid needle/seat assembly open & caused the problem. Bike now has 92,000 & all is well over the last 14,000 miles!  

Sounds like you may have a similar problem just on a different carb.