82 Maxim Carb Problems?

Joined: Aug 11, 2005 Posts: 2

I picked my wife up an old 82' Yamaha Maxim. It will only idle with the choke on, as soon as you kill the choke it dies and as soon as you give it any gas it dies. I'm guessing it's the carbs. I took the air filter off and shot some carb cleaner spray up into the 2 intakes with it running and managed to get it to rev up a bit but then it started shooting this nasty looking brown crap that smells like gas out of the hole below and centered between the two intakes when it revs. Is there any way to fix this thing without totally taking the carbs off? Any suggestions if I do have to take them off? I cleaned out the tank and checked the petcock and they're both clean. It did sit for at least a year before I bought it. Also if anyone has a service manual for this thing on the computer that I could get off of them I haven't had time to order one yet.

External Since: Jul 20, 2005 Posts: 319

Sean wrote:
> It will only idle with the choke on, as soon as you kill the choke it dies
> and as soon as you give it any gas it dies. I'm guessing it's the carbs. >

Congratulations. You are the 50 millionth motorbike rider to post this
exact same symptom. Your idle jets and idle passages are plugged up
with gum and varnish.

It's possible to clean the junk out of your carbs using aerosol carb
cleaner if you can figure out which hole is the pilot air intake. It's
probably the small hole on the right as you look down the intake. But
you can't go squirting a whole lot of carb cleaner down that hole with
the engine off, the carb cleaner can get into the engine and dilute
your oil. A little bit at a time with the engine running at a fast idle
should help. Otherwise, you're going to have to pull the carbs off and
do a proper job of cleaning them.

I've probably posted what to do about this problem about 100 times in
rec.motorcycles.tech. Google up "idle jets" in rec.motorcycles.tech...