Q: I’ve owned a Suzuki VS1400 cruiser for many years and because of a recent illness I haven’t ridden it for the past five years. Don’t worry, my question isn’t about myself it’s about the bike.
I fitted a new battery to start my 1400 once more and then hopefully go out for a long awaited ride. I also drained the tank and took out the stagnant fuel, and cleaned the spark plugs. Surprisingly it started quickly but then things went downhill. There was a lot of coughing and spluttering and the bike suddenly backfired and stopped and a weird smell came out from the exhaust pipes.
So I took off the air-box cover to have a look inside and discovered that half of the old and perished air-filter had been sucked into the motor, which I presume isn’t too good! I managed to get the intake rubber from the carb on the front cylinder off and it was full of the stuff. The rear carb looks like a nightmare to get to also so I left that for a while.
So what’s my best plan of attack folks, to get my 1400 back on the road to freedom? I don’t have a workshop manual and no one seems to have one either. All your help will be greatly appreciated…
Kevin Wighthouse Durban.
A: If you go onto the Internet you’ll be able to download some sort of workshop manual for this bike, so you might need a younger person to help you with that.
But that’s not the problem here because this is one ‘pig’ of a job you have ahead of you. Firstly, the carbs will be full of sticky unleaded fuel residue (and filter bits), which needs many hours and patience to remove, using many tins of carb cleaner. Make sure you take out every jet, clean every air passage, etc, and you’ll probably need to find an airline to blow it through.
However the rear cylinder carb is really hard to get at and you’ll need to dismantle half the bike to get to it – it sits below the seat and way down inside the frame rails. Once you’ve done all of this, and sworn a lot, you’ll have to synchronize the pair of them using the two connecting cables, so don’t leave them off or unused or it’ll run horribly lumpy, for the want of a better word.
So yes, you will need a manual, or maybe take it to your closest Suzuki shop instead to be sure, but the labour bill will not be cheap I’m afraid because of the amount of work involved.
