Removing float bowls while carbs installed?

[Heavy Armor]

I sure as heck don't wanna pull off these "new" carbs again, but they are leaking like a sieve around the float bowl screws (at least that seems to be the source). Is it possible to remove the float bowls while the carbs are still on? Seems tight, but if someone else has accomplished it, I may give it a shot.

(FYI, it's the actual bowl screws, not the drain screws, acts like there's a bad gasket)

[Chris Cochran]

I'm kind of surprised that no one has answered this.

I'm curious about this myself.

[Nails]

Don't remember whether I've done it, but pretty sure I have. Just take out those four screws and see if you can twist it out. (I think the question resolves to whether you can reach those screws.)

It's super easy to mess up the float bowl o-ring. I use a LITTLE gasket seal ... now. I once used more than a LITTLE and it interfered with the float.

[Heavy Armor]

I went ahead and pulled the carbs again. It might have technically been possible to get them off, but the guy that rebuilt them nearly stripped the head of every screw, and one was almost impossible to get out even with the carbs removed, so it was never gonna work for me.

I didn't see anything really wrong with the old gasket. Except maybe it was an OLD gadget. It looked a little dirty, so hard to tell. The float bowl had not been cleaned of debris, so I really don't know what was rebuilt and what wasn't. Hopefully the new gasket does the trick.

[Nails]

Sounds like you need to go back through the carbs to verify they're right. Since they're off, I'd definitely suggest looking beyond the float-bowl gaskets.

I've pulled my carbs at least a half dozen times. It sucks. Working on them in situ (like adjusting the pilots) sucks, too.

A little dirt definitely could cause a leak. Carb work requires a mighty clean environment, kinda like working on automatic transmissions.

Aftermarket float-bowl o-rings are less than half the cost of MaKa ones, which can be hard to find. I went aftermarket, and it worked out fine. But there's a tangible risk of crap gaskets, especially if you got a shoddy rebuild. (I don't remember what you said about the history of your "new" carbs.)

There's just a lot of ways a shoddy rebuild could fail. At least you can narrow your focus to ones that cause fuel leaks. But I'd still do a broader inspection, given that the carbs are in hand.