WTF? with these Honda carburators already &*$&!^%#$!*^

[action450s]

I've never had trouble with the carb on my Honda in 11 years, and having it sit most winters while I skidoo all winter.

I've had trouble with my skidoo one year when I stored it with stabil in the fuel, everything gummed up and the carb had to be cleaned.

The carb you have needs to be cleaned then tuned first. Then you have to change your habits. If you used the bike frequently you wouldnt have a problem, but it sounds like its sitting for awhile between rides. First store the bike with as little gas in the tank as you can, if not store it with a full tank and siphon off the dead gas before you even start it topping it off with fresh gas.

I would start turning the fuel switch to OFF and run the bike until it stalls, this way the carb is empty and theres nothing there to gum up.

IMHO no matter what you buy in terms of fuel stabilizer it will only be good for so long. Fresh gas saves alot of trouble, and a part bottle of carb cleaner added to the gas every 2nd tank (since you ride in-frequently) will help alot.

[zitaron]

Last post advice about running bowl dry , then turning off fuel, is right on.
As a one-off I would be inclined to run some Sea Foam through the tank (Gimpster put me onto this - and sometimes it just works!! even after I've cleaned a carb and things are wrong)
try this link - I'm sure there are others but this as near the top of the search ----
Sea Foam - webBikeWorld

Also make sure you aren't over-oiling your air filter - best of luck
Is the choke free moving?

[budedm]

I'm not the expert that these other guys are but could it be that you have a weak spark? I had a bad CDI and the symptoms were the same as you are describing.

[WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot]

Oldest son disassembled his carb and cleaned the passages. When blowing air through he noticed that there was almost a complete blockage on the idle circuit. Put it all back together, cleaned the petcock, lines and everything else he could then added SeaFoam, to all the quads - not just his and sure enough it ran fine. We rode for about an hours or so yesterday and everything's fine. Even the little drip he was experiences from the float bowl overflow when sitting seems to have healed itself!

Just for the record, and in reply to a post above, I do not "run" avgas in the ATVs but, at the end of the season would run either StaBil or Avgas through the carb and allow either StaBil treated fuel or Avgas to sit in the tank. I think that I am now a Sea Foam fan.

As for running the carbs dry, I have heard others recommend this practice but also listened to the opposing viewpoint that it exposes more areas of the carb to air and that that those area are "wet" from their contact with the fuel anyway. I would think that the "wet" area would dry our in short order as gasoline will evaporate. In short, I think that Sea Foam, running the carbs dry by closing the petcock before shutdown and leaving the tank full (to avoid condensation) with sea foam treated fuel is the regiment i will follow but, given my tract record, I am always open to suggestions.

Thank you to all who replied and offered advice.