[essjae]

I recently bought a salage titled 94 RF600. Among some of its problems was an extremely rusty gas tank. When I pulled the tank and drained the gas, the gas was a dark orange and there was a good quarter inch of rust residue on the bottom of the tank.

So I picked up a tank cheap from eBay, only problem is that I'm in California, and the bike is California, but the tank isn't. The California version of the RF600 has extra emissions, specifically a fuel vapor line from the tank and some other vacuum hoses from the carbs. I put the tank back on and filtered some of the old fuel I drained from the original tank to see if she would start up. She's running, but not perfectly. Of course, this is an old bike that had a tramatic past so I'm not excepting her to purr like new.

I put some fresh gas in today and shes running ok, but she's lacking some power that was available before I pulled the tank.

What I'm wondering are there any problems (and the lack of power one mentioned above) with not having the correct tank? Basically, fuel vapor gets pulled out of the tank into a canister then pushed back into the carbs "purge ports". Right now I've got the hose that would connect to the tank just loose, sucking air I guess. I haven't tried closing it off, I didn't know if that would burn out the vacuum canister.


Also, does anyone know or have any pics of a RF600 without the fairings? Mine are a bit chewed up and I was thinking of pulling them off and going for a "street-fighter" look.

Thanks
SJ

 

[Uncle Bob]

I would definately go over the whole fuel delivery system and make sure there is no junk in the lines, if you had chunky gaz, that stuff could have gotten into the lines and carbs so you should take everything apart and clean or replace anything that might be contaminated with your orange gas.


I would look into having a vent added to the tank like the original. I'm sure a shop could drill a hole and weld on a proper sized tube ( or maybe you could finagle a screw in type of tube?). Or secondly simply block off the tube that is now sucking air which would cause a lean running condition ( too much air not enoug gas).

 

[gsxrjeffro]

welcome to the forum! you could have a few problems. i would first go through the carbs real good, rund some carb cleaner in the tank (try to run it all out in one ride) and even check the coil packs and wires.
here's a link to a yahoo group just for rf's
http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/suzukirfclub/
have a great day and ride safe,
jeffro

 

[essjae]

thanks for the tips. I pulled the hoses to the carbs, and it seems to be running better, still seems to lack a power until I get over 4000rpms, could that be where the other carb needles come into play? I recall from highschool auto class, that there are lowspeed and highspeed carbs (on cars at least) so I was thinking that the low speed carbs are fouled up.

Does any of that make sense? I'll probably need to take the bike into the shop for carb work, never done any myself

 

[gsxrjeffro]

try adding the carb cleaner to a freah tank of gas and run the whole tank in one day. if its not bad this might do the trick and save you some $$$ most shops charge way toooo much. the emulsion tubes most likely have some blockage.. did you join the yahoo group i sent the link to? this group will help you out a lot..
-jeffro

 

[essjae]

havent' joined yet, I was waiting for an update from yahoo groups, I added a new newsgroup.

I've got some carb cleaner and I'll take lil Suzie out for a nice long ride this weekend.

Thanks

 

[essjae]

So today I plugged the hoses to the carbs, thinking that maybe there was too much air going in or out of them with the hoses just laying loose. I took the bike for a spin around the block and parked in my garage, took the dog for a walk, and when I came back the bike was bleeding gas all over the floor. Apparently, there was some sort of vacuum sucking gas out of the tank, I could here the suction around the gas cap.

So, I decided to bite the bullet and ordered a tank from a salvage shop in Sacramento. Hopefully, they'll get me a California tank and then I'm done!!