KZ650 Float level tool?

'79 KZ650 B3

I just had a nice case of hydro-lock. It's not the needle and seats, so I'm wanting to properly set the floats.

I've seen this tool for VM26s and VM28s:

cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Carb-Float-Level...&hash=item41536f00e9

My bike has VM24s, doesn't it? Will this tool work? If not, what will?

Thanks

do your carbs have 6 mm drain screws? then yes it will

Yes it will work, however float height can't fill the engine with gas no matter how fouled up they are because you have the overflows on the bottom of each carb bowl that gas will drain on the ground if floats don't stop the gas. I know this has been beaten into the ground, and many have gas get in the engine, but this is an unexplained unsolved mystery as the throat of the carbs are higher than the overflow by a large enough distance to insure it is 100% impossible for gas to flood into the engine no matter what as long as the drains are not blocked. At least this is true on the VM series, can't speak for the CVs. Same exact concept as a sink or bathtub that has the overflow drains built in a few inches down from the brim, water rises, gets too high, drains harmlessly through the overflow. Safety feature built into carbs the same way.
Does anything work correctly on that B3??? :laugh: I would have had the sledgehammer out a few years back if I had 5% of the problems you've encountered.

RonKZ650 wrote:

Does anything work correctly on that B3??? :laugh: I would have had the sledgehammer out a few years back if I had 5% of the problems you've encountered.

Bud, you just gave me a huge belly laugh, on a day when I really needed one. Thanks for that.

That beautiful, red, classic @#$%^&!!! KZ650 has been a bit of a lemon, hasn't it?

Honest to god, the last time it died on me and left me beside the road, jumping up and down on the kickstarter, I walked a mile or so to a convenience store, bought a gas can, a gallon of gas, and a lighter, and stomped back down the road absolutely determined to set that goddamn thing on fire.

I was dead serious.

This really nice guy in a step-van work truck saw me walking, stopped and picked me up, and drove me back to the bike.

He asked me if it had a gas gauge, I sad: "No, but it's not out of gas"

"What are you doing with the gas can then?" he asked.

"I'm gonna light that sumbitch on fire", I said, and launched into a litany of my many woes with the bike, punctuated by pretty much every curse word you can imagine, and a few I made up.

It took me awhile before I realized he hadn't taken me back to the bike, instead, he'd been driving me around letting me blow off steam. Eventually I sputtered to a stop, and he asked me if I was OK.

"Yeah", I said, "but it would have been a lot of fun to let that @#$%^&!!! thing burn.

He laughed and took me back to the bike. We loaded it up in the back of his step-van and he took us home.

Turns out he's a preached who'd done a tour in Iraq as a chaplain the year before and had some skill in letting people blow off steam.

I still kinda wish I'd done it, though.

RonKZ650 wrote:

Yes it will work, however float height can't fill the engine with gas no matter how fouled up they are because you have the overflows on the bottom of each carb bowl that gas will drain on the ground if floats don't stop the gas. I know this has been beaten into the ground, and many have gas get in the engine, but this is an unexplained unsolved mystery as the throat of the carbs are higher than the overflow by a large enough distance to insure it is 100% impossible for gas to flood into the engine no matter what as long as the drains are not blocked. At least this is true on the VM series, can't speak for the CVs. Same exact concept as a sink or bathtub that has the overflow drains built in a few inches down from the brim, water rises, gets too high, drains harmlessly through the overflow. Safety feature built into carbs the same way....

as long as the drains are not blocked-- important words, as it only takes one malfunctioning carb overflow circuit to allow fuel to keep on rising.

Test for non-believers -- block the toilet tank overflow tube, and allow the water to keep running into the tank (akin to malfunctioning carb overflow circuit).
Prevent whatever mechanism is supposed to shut off the water (akin to effect of a leaking carb float valve).
Yep, the water keeps right on rising.
Call Noah! :lol:

Some carbs don't have overflow circuits, such as Mikuni smoothbores and some CV designs.

Good Fortune!

seanof30306 wrote:

'79 KZ650 B3...wanting to properly set the floats. Will this tool work?...

Tool isn't essential.

May just use appropriately sized clear tube pressed into the drain hole.

Slight leakage doesn't adversely affect the fuel level measurement.

Good Fortune!

Patton wrote:

seanof30306 wrote:

'79 KZ650 B3...wanting to properly set the floats. Will this tool work?...

Tool isn't essential.

May just use appropriately sized clear tube pressed into the drain hole.

Slight leakage doesn't adversely affect the fuel level measurement.

Good Fortune!

Patton, you are amazing; the king of graphics.

How in the world did you come up with that diagram?