Cleaning carbies

Dellortoman

Dellortoman

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Location
Tasmania, Australia
I've been re-commissioning an old Moto Guzzi that's been neglected for years (not my bike). I've been wanting to soda blast the grubby old Dellorto VHB carbies for a couple of weeks, but the weather has been too shitty. It's an outside job because the soda dust goes everywhere. Finally got a half reasonable day today so set myself up on the deck outside the workshop and got to work with the compressor and baking soda. I've attached a picture showing before and after appearance. Can you tell which is which?

As you can see from the second photo, the inside of the carbs looked even worse than the outside but came up looking nice and clean. I reckon soda blasting is one of the most effective ways to clean gunked-up old carb bodies. With a new set of jets, gaskets and o-rings, these old things should be nearly as good as new. Certainly good enough for the old Guzzi tractor.

Cheers,
Cam
 

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Cam, Give them a good soak and blow them clear too. The soda may dissolve but the crap it loosens often stays around to cause problems,especially in the idle circuit.
 
Is soaking them whole in deox c a bad idea (citric acid)I know it clears rust but would it clear the carb bodies?
 
Lemon: You want something that will dissolve that yellowish/brownish crud left by evaporated gas, rather than a corrosion dissolver. I tried dipping a rack of 4 carbs from a CB750 in a citrus based product, and it did nothing to this crud. I then used a product here called Berryman's chem dip, which comes in 1 gallon sizes with a strainer, and this cleaned all the gas crud out. It will eat rubber, so you need to count on dismantling the carb before dipping, but this worked as well as the job done on a set of dellortos I sent out to be soda blasted and cleaned.
 
Hi LJ,

Not really advised. Acids can help, but are not really a 1-touch solution. Try by all means, but can turn the carb body dark grey. If you do try, scrub with a hard nylon brush every 20 mins and go on for endless hours. Also, some parts have a higher zinc content than the body (such as the triangular pumper diaphragm covers) these don't like acids at all. Fizz fizz fizz.

Any zinc coated steel parts in the body (such as the slide stake) will suffer.

Hag
 
Thanks for the offer Phil

I need a bunch of other parts for this bike (filters, cables, brake hoses, electrical bits, etc.) so I'm putting together a shopping list. It will probably simplest to it all in one go from a Guzzi parts supplier like MG Cycle. Thbeir prices aren't too bad. I'll get back to you if I have any trouble finding the carb kits.

Cheers,
Cam
 
You can get most parts for VHBs still, save needles, which are very scarce, and slides, which come up now and again on Ebay and can still be had is some sizes through vendors. I had a set of 25VHBs on my Moto Morini, and I could not find any replacement needles, and I bought a spare set of slides off Ebay since no one seemed to have the size I needed. Most other parts (jets, floats, chokes, orings,idle/air screws) are shared with other Dellorto carbs so I had the parts in my "Dellorto box". MG has a lot of Dellorto stuff, as does Bevelheaven and Guzzino.com, run by Paul Montgomery here in SoCal.
 
new VHB bodies aren't available - which is a bugger as I've a couple of sinistro VHB24Bs but I need a destro.

dellorto UK (AKA Eurocarb) seem to have most of the spares you're likely to need.
 
this place seems to have a good selection of Del parts - esp if every penny counts and you don't mind buying from a place with scooter in the name - I find the part number from Eurocarb then search for it here http://www.myscooterparts.co.uk/carbs-and-parts/ very quick delivery as well.

just got a bag full of original Dellorto jets for half the price of Eurocarb
 
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