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Fuel leakage from carburetor?

E

epc303

Tricycle
I had a small leak of what appeared to be fuel accumulate under my 1995 following a short (75 mile) ride. About 30 miles from home I filled up the tank. Air temp was in the 80's. The leak was not there 1-2 hr following the ride but was there the next morning. From the smell, it was definitely gasoline and appeared to be coming from the plastic connector between the air filter and carburetors. FWIW - Carbs were taken apart and cleaned about 500 miles ago and this was the first instance of said fuel leakage. Do I need to be worried? Routine float bowl overflow and spillage? Thanks.
 
Hi Ethan; This situation could be serious. Your worst case scenario is you have a cylinder full of gasoline at the bottom of its compression stroke waiting for you to hit the starter button. If this is true, then you will destroy your engine when you hit the starter. At the very least, you have a carburetor float needle that is not sealing or a defective fuel petcock diaphragm. You could also have a significant amount of fuel in your oil. First verify there is no gas in with your oil. If you do have gas mixed in with your oil change it after fixing the problem and before starting the engine. Next, pull your sparkplugs and the red wires from your ignition coils and then turn the motor over with the starter to expel any fuel from the cylinders (a cloth placed over the open sparkplug wells will save you some grief here....). The OEM parts to rebuild the petcock run around $30.00 and in my experience they are of better quality than the aftermarket stuff. If the petcock diaphragm won't hold vacuum it's time to rebuild it. If everything checks out good to this point then you likely have some garbage caught in a carb float needle. You mentioned the leak appears to be "coming from the plastic connector betwen the air filter and carburetors". You may be able to remove your air filter and stick your hand up in there far enough to figure out which carb is the culprit if external visual indications are inconclusive. I had a similar problem on my 01 several years ago and that's how I identified the problem carb. Sometimes just draining the float bowl completely so the float valve is all the way open and then filling it up will flush problems on through. On my bike, I had to remove the float bowl, float and float valve from carb #1. Only then was I able to get the problem flushed through and it was a black pebble like object. Very strange. Let us know what you find.
 
Thanks for the response, Brooke. Thank god is wasn't your worst case scenario, because I had already fired it up and rode it around the block before reading your post. I will chase down the other possibilities. For now, I will be riding my KLR.
 
I just got through rebuilding my carbs and the bike ran great when I got everything back together. But then there was this smell and a small wet spot under the bike. Turns out that one of the o-rings on that little plastic fuel tube that distributes fuel between the carbs had crumbled. I probably got some Gumout on it. Had to pulls the carbs one more time (I'm getting good at it!) and all for a $1 part no less - all fixed now.
 
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