Gas Leaking, please help

[Daniel Van weert]

on the left side carb, there is a black drainage tube that runs down along the chassis to the ground. on my bike this tube is jettisoning gas extremely fast and I have plugged it. this is the first time it has ever happened to me, so what should I do?what is this a symptom of? it looks like an overflow drainage cable but it has already leaked half of my tank.  :'(

[RobTx]

The float valve is stuck open and you probably have the petcock on prime.  If you plugged the hose, now all that gas is going into the engine.  You'll have to fix the problem first, then probably do an oil change or two to get all the gas out.  First, put the petcock on "on", no gas should flow, if it does, the petcock needs rebuilding.  Next take care or the leaky float, this could be as simple as tapping the carbs with a screw driver, but more likely you'll have to take them apart.  Plugging the hose just makes the gas look for somewhere else to go, the intake into the engine is that place.  You could have gallons of gas in your engine.
Rob

[sgrprincees]

I had the same problem and I took the carbs off the bike to fix it but then decided to just put them back on because of all the stuck screws.  When I put them back on they worked ok when choked (died at idle) and had enough power to get me to 60 mph.  I cleaned them out after a bit of that and am very happy I did.

[dvw]

where is the "petcock" and how do I turn it off?

[timovision]

I had this problem a while back before I completely cleaned
my carbs (which you probably have gotta do at some point
anyway).  Turns out (I think) that my needle valve was sticking open.....
A quick fix until you have time to clean everything
up inside the carbs is to take a small block of wood and give
the carbs a rap or two.  Not sure if this will work every
time, but it worked well enough to loosen everything back
up so that I could ride the V for a while before the problem
came back.  It's definitely better than riding down the road
leaking gas!
BTW, Butting the block of wood against the carb left side of
bike and rapping with a rubber mallet works even better than
the block of wood alone...
Keep riding,
Tim

[RobTx]

Daniel, the petcock is the valve on the left side of the tank with a hose going to the carbs and a hose going to an intake manifold.  It has 3 positions, "on", "res" and "pri".  Normally you would run the petcock on "on".  No gas will flow unless there is vacuum from the engine.  To get gas into the carb, you may have to put it on "pri" (prime) for a minute or so.  Your float valve is stuck open most likely because a small piece of rust or other debris from the tank is keeping it open.  Installing a filter inline will keep this from happening again.
Rob

[Lucky]

That is a bowl over flow drain. Pull the hose that connects the 2 carbs together to see which one is leaking. Try tightening the philipps screw right next to it, that screw is the drain screw.

First the petcock should be left on "On" even when the bke is off, this lets fuel flow only if the bike is running.  Only use Pprime before starting the bike if it's sat for several days or more without running, then once the bike starts, turn it to Prime.  If it leaks then the float needles should stop the fuel

UNLESS:

One is stuck open. Tapping on the side of the cartb with the handle of a screwdriver sometimes helps get them unstuck.  This usually indicates the need for a carb cleaning.

There is a tube inside the carb that leads to the drain, if fuel level goes higher than the top of this tube then fuel leaks out, even if the screw is closed. that's how it's designed to work. There are pics of this on my site.  if the carbs leak like this only when hot, the float level needs to be adjusted.

Whatever you do, Never block off this hose, if you do you'll end up with a cylinder or crankcase full of oil, not a good thing.  what happens is that the carb fills up & overflows down the intakes into the engine.
--Lucky

[Rick G]

One other use for the prime position ,is when you go on reserve   at a signal light , while idleing. The engine will stop and putting it to the reserve position wont help , put it on prime until it starts , then put it on reserve  and head for a gas station! I learned this the hard way!