A note on the Keyster Carb Kits from ebay...

[YoDude]

About a year ago, I bought a pair of '94 model carbs off ebay and a Keyster set of repair kits as well.
The idea was to fix an issue I was having with the rear carb, but instead of going through the original carb, I'd first rebuild the '94 rear carb and install it on the bike to see the results and if it didn't work out right, I could replace it with the original to keep ay down time to a minimum.

The project went well, the rebuild was easy and trust me I learned a lot from doing it. The rebuilt carb is still on the bike and is performing well. The original carb is still completely stock and unmolested. I put up a lengthy thread about the project but even if you can find it, all the pic links will be broken as my image host apparently has gone belly up.

I had no issues with the rear carb and there are plenty of parts that come in these kits.

Float needle valve and seat.
Pilot air jet
Main fuel jet
Pilot fuel jet
Needle jet
Slide needle
A/F screw, spring and washer
Bowl gasket
and a few other small parts.

IIRC both kits come with all these new parts, though the jet sizes are different and the shapes of them are as well.

One thing I took note of was that the needle that came out of the carb was a bit different than the one supplied in the kit. It was shorter by almost 1/4" and clearly exited the needle jet if I pushed the slide all the way to the top. I pondered over this for a while and decided to use the needle that came with the kit. This needle does not completely exit the needle jet when the slide is pushed up.

All the jets were the same as what was in the carb with exception of the pilot fuel jet which was a 55 in the carb and a 57.5 in the kit. One size larger, not a huge deal.

So all in all, that project went very well and I'm still happy with the results.

Now, as for the front carb. I decided to finally do the same job to the front carb as I had to the rear. I figured in doing so, I'll have both my stock carbs off the bike, have little down time and will get to try out a pair of the K&N 1820 pod filters after I've gotten it tuned up again and been riding it for a few weeks to collect some plug reading data on how the front jug is burning with the rebuilt carb. All that stuff is still in the works, so don't bother asking questions about how it's turned out. In a nutshell however, the rebuild went well and the bike is running very well.

This thread isn't about that. There were three issues I noticed with the front carb kit that I feel people may want to know about.

The first is, on the front carb, there's a part inside the bowl that holds the needle jet in place. It's a small brass piece that has six points on it and it sort of looks like an acorn nut. When removed and turned over, there's a hole on the other side that the slide needle fits into when the slide is all the way down. This piece has threads on it and screws into the needle jet to clamp it into place. The needle jet that came with the kit ha(s/d) a different thread pitch and so, the small brass piece wouldn't screw into the needle jet far enough to seat properly.

I ended up using the original needle jet instead of the one in the kit. I did however use the needle that came in the kit to replace the shorter one that was in this carb, just as was in the rear carb. Later, I compared the needle to one from a Cobra stage 1 jet kit and they seem to be identical so it looks as though these '94 carbs had a cobra jet kit installed in them. I don't know if the slides have been drilled out as per the Cobra instructions tell you to do.

Another issue I found was that the pilot air jet in the kit was a 55 and the one in the carb was a 75. I used the 55 jet that came in the kit originally because I was guessing the kit people should know what they're doing. I hadn't looked up the spec for that part before I put the one in the kit in there, that came later. As I was doing the initial tuning, I wasn't liking how things were going and the differences in that jet size was haunting me so, I looked this up in the book to see the spec on this jet. The book states it's supposed to be a 70. The 75 that was in the carb was a Mikuni part but I think the original was probably replaced with the 75. I ended up removing the pilot air jet from my original stock carb and replaced the 55 with the 70 that came out of the original. Tuning was better after that.

The final issue was that the main fuel jet was the large diameter size from the kit vs, the smaller diameter one. I've read in a few places that the small diameter one is for the front carb and the large one, is for the rear. The jet for the front was a 125 that was in the kit and in the carb. Other than the physical diameter, there doesn't seem to be any difference between them. The replacement jet fit just fine, so I dunno, may that one is an old wives tale or something. If it makes a difference, the seat of my butt dyno sure can't tell it.

In conclusion, here's what I know.

You probably don't need the Keyster carb kit unless you're rebuilding a carb that might be missing a part or two.
The carb kit for the rear was not any issue, the one for the front couldn't be implemented fully and the pilot air jet size differed quite a bit from stock. The needle jet was unusable because it couldn't be installed properly. That issue COULD possibly be worked around however, using a spacer or something.

There are other kits available also that include basically a new float needle, needle seat and bowl gasket but that's about it. If you have a complete carb, I'd recommend you try to find one of these instead of the Keyster kit.

On edit: I added this additional information.

Someone made mention recently that there are currently no VS1400 carb rebuild kits available on ebay. In doing some research on this, I find it is quite true (unless you consider a rebuild kit, 3 o-rings, a float needle and seat and a bowl gasket a rebuild kit).

I purchased my kit from these people HERE and have gone to their site and they show them as, 'out of stock'. I fired off an email asking if they were going to get more stock on these. Waiting to hear back from them about it.

Meanwhile, I did more digging and found them in the 'Land Down Under".

FRONT

REAR

I don't know what the shipping cost would be from there, but at least they are still in existence.

Yo-