I have a 1983 goldwing gl1100. The carburetors have always been an issue and I think it's because of either poor quality eBay rebuild kits, or more likely the fact that when I bought it the throttle shafts were seized and I did some damage in repairing them. So I have had them out three times which is a major pain and now I am contemplating pulling them out again and buying another set to rebuild with a better quality kit. That will be a $300 or $400 investment in a bike that I spent $1,300 to buy. But I was looking into single carburetor conversions and they use a Volkswagen Solex carburetor, one of which I happen to have. There are a couple of ways to do the conversion, either with a custom manifold which is pretty simple to build, or using the Honda four carburetor plenum and adapting the single VW carburetor to that. So I thought if I was using the plenum anyway, why would I not lock the goldwing throttles open and just bolt the Volkswagen carburetor on top in place of the air cleaner? This would make it very simple to pull on and off and to play with jetting, and if it doesn't work I can quickly remove it put the original air cleaner back on and go riding. So although I recognize this is not exactly a high performance improvement, it might be a simple fun way to avoid having the bike off the road for a month while I spend a bunch of money doing yet another carburetor rebuild. Is this a dumb idea and I should just man up, spend the money and do it right?

californiamilleghia
californiamilleghia UberDork
5/9/24 2:10 p.m.

I think its a GREAT idea  , and would love to see you try and make it work :)

will you pull out the butterflys , venturis  and the chokes (if there are any)

In reply to californiamilleghia :

I thought to just wire everything open.

Indy - Guy
Indy - Guy UltimaDork
5/9/24 5:23 p.m.

In reply to bearmtnmartin (Forum Supporter) :

I think it's worth a try.  Probably would work just fine.  Perhaps a bit of delayed throttle response 

Not getting the scornful laughter I expected so I will give it a try. I'll let you all know how it worked. 

The kits that replace the original four carb setup just have long tubes connecting the intake ports to the single carburetor. If the chokes are wired open seems like the stock Honda carburetors become part of the long tubes. In fact it might add some tunability if I can close the chokes slightly to even the cylinders out.

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