After dragging my feet and trying to take the easy way out, I broke down and did a rebuild of the carbs.  This involved dis-assembly, a bath in carb dip and new o-rings.

Some of the o-rings were malformed, others dry rotted and the rest ill fitting and hardened.  I went to pull the carbs apart and ran into a problem of not being able to break one of the screws loose on the mounting rail causing it to strip out.  I ended up having to drill the head off as extractors didn’t want to catch.  Once the head and lock washer were off, the screw stud came out easily.  Quick trip to home depot and a replacement was had.

Over the next two days I broke the carbs down and gave each a bath in carb dip to get rid of any remaining varnish and buildup.  The fuel bowl o-ring slots were so filthy with varnish that some parts of the old o-rings broke away and stuck to the bowl.  After the cleaning everything was nice ans shiny again.  I then went through all the fuel and vent connections running between the carbs and replaced all the o-rings there.  Here is a quick shot of the set screw o-rings to give you an idea of how badly they needed replacing.  Old on the left, new on the right.

While cleaning up the float needles I noticed that the rubber tips were slightly deformed.  It’s a toss up on these as some folks say they will be fine, others that they should be replaced.  I’m going to run with them for now to see if they cause any issues in the future since those little jewels are $35 a pop.

When putting #4 back together I noticed a slight tear on the very outer edge of the diaphragm.  With it being on the very outer most part of the sealing ring I am hoping that this won’t cause any issues but only time will tell.  Apparently Kawi thinks these things are made of gold because replacements for them are $127 each.

And the final item of the rebuild was the K-TRIC system, which stands for Kawasaki Throttle Response Ignition Control.  It’s a TPS system that will decide to adjust the carb blades whenever it feels like it.  Yep, that’s got to go.

And here we go with the nice shiny delete plate bolted on after the rebuild.

While getting everything back together I also opted to swap out the standard phillips screws for stainless allen button screws on the bowls and diaphragm caps.

After getting everything re-installed on the mounting rails without using the hulk like force the previous person to work on them did, I put them back on the bike and crossed my fingers.  Fired right up and after adjusting the idle I let it sit for a while and warm up.  After being satisfied that there weren’t any leaks, I hooked up the Motion-Pro sync tool to the vacuum ports and started to get them in line.  This goes to show how trying to sync by eyeballing it will never work as everything looked identical when when back together but #1 and #4 were pulling about twice as much vacuum as their partners.  Spent some time playing with the throttle adjustment screws and got everything to within 1/4 an inch of vacuum to each other.

I decided this was enough for today and called it a night.  A lot going on tomorrow trying to get ready for a trip but if I can find the time, I will re-install the tank, put in an ignition advancer and give it another oil & filter change.