Last fall before I started working at Port of Call Marina, I bought myslef an old motocross bike to fix up over the winter. It is a 1984 Suzuki RM250 and not suprisingly, the carburetor was badly plugged. One day I spent an hour scraping and cleaning but it was going to take a lot more than what I had available to me.
A few days later I happened to bump into Mark Baskin at the feed store. I worked for him in the late 1980s as a Marine Mechanic and I was telling him about my new-old bike and how plugged up the carburetor was. I asked him if I could come down to the marina some time and use his parts cleaner and he mentioned his current mechanic has a sonic parts washer.
A couple days later Mark called me and mentioned George had brought in his sonic parts cleaner and I should bring over my RM carburetor and take advantage.
inside this sonic parts cleaner sits the curburetor of my old bike. We put it in for about 15 minutes and then blew it out. The pilot circuit was still plugged so it went in for another 15 minutes which did the trick
This is the cleaning fluid, aparently a 20-litre pail is worth $200. It is a non corrosive product so the carburetor was not damaged in any way.
After some time in the cleaner it started to look good.
The results were astounding. Even the seized plunger on the needle valve was freed up.
Some before shots would have been nice to have, but maybe next time. I was really happy to get this problem resolved so soon, I am confident that I won't have any carburetor issues next spring. I am also pretty sure this bike will run strong.
