[My first GS, its got issues :p]

5 hours ago, inazumarob said:

Normally the idle adjustment on Suzuki carbs is done by a knurled adjusting wheel hanging underneath the carbs in the middle. Best carb synchroniser for sensible money is a Morgan Carbtune. The Gunson colortune is the glass plug you are looking for, harder to see flame colour with modern fuels though. Reset mixture adjusting screws to standard settings when fitting airbox and filter, normally located at bottom of carb body in a little tower casting.

 

Thanks! great input. Ill try and find the OEM number of turns in some manual somewhere. Funny how the stock airbox has some kind of cone restriction on the middle two cylinders, but is fully open on the outer carbs 1 and 4.

I ordered the K & L 18-2589 carb kit. hopefully it comes with the right jets.

[My first GS, its got issues :p]

Thanks for this forum, I just bought my first road bike, a 1982 GS550L. My last favorite bike was a DR650, oh boy is this a smooth change. 

I got a good deal for it (i think :p) because it has carb issues. The P.O. is an auto body guy and it was his first bike, he restored it, it wasn't running for 20 years. But since he put pods on and got his friend to mess with the jetting, its not running good. The P.O. isn't much of a mechanic and was tired of trying to get the carbs tuned. I am an automechanic so i figured i'd give it a shot. the only carb experience i have is on some tractors and a dual Dellorto carbed Rx7. 

The previous owners friend cleaned the carbs and precision drilled the jets to make it run rich, because of the pods. Luckily, he still had the stock air-box. 

I'm thinking of finding the stock Jets for it and putting the stock air-box back on. Does anyone know what the stock jet size are? What would you start doing to it first?

The bike starts up on a 1/4 turn so i know the compression is good. But it starts cold without the choke and did a few back fires once. Looks to me like its running too rich. trying to figure out how to adjust the settings for the idle as it runs high and on startup gets carried away to 3000 rpms... sometimes... haha 

I can still ride it but it doesn't have much power past 5k and over 70kph feels real slow.

The clutch is real heavy and the cable looks old so i will try and change that. 

Any input is good! thanks! 

I will be getting some tools to sync the carbs and maybe one of those color tuning plugs to help.