Suzuki Quaddrunner 250 LT-4WD - Unnecessary mod :D

[BenderIsGreat]

Hey, this is just an FYI post.  After getting my quadrunner going again (voltage regulator issue in other posts), it ran well, but a couple of times I had trouble getting it started.  I suspected the fuel petcock because I was shutting the fuel off when I wasn't using it, and I knew the filter/stems in the tank were looking rough last time I shone a flashlight into an empty tank.  So I went on amazon.ca and bought the cheapest petcock I could find, like $13.99.  But when it arrived, I realized it was different than the original.  It had on/res/pri as the level selections, and along with fuel out, had a connection for (I discovered) vacuum in.  Wheras the original petcock only had on/off/res and just fuel out.  So I read up on it, sounded cool, the vacuum connection means that you just leave the lever set to on, and it automatically cuts fuel when the engine is off.  So I found a splitter, and I split vacuum off my fuel pump to the new pet cock, and it seems to work well.

 

I'm not sure if I've made a mistake here, but I like the idea of an automatic fuel shutoff, and if there's an issue, I can just set it to Pri, and it bypasses the vacuum shut off and just allows fuel to drain through the lower Res stem.  Only thing was setting the lever to Res, I expected it to work the same as On, but fuel coming from the lower Res stem, but it doesn't seem to allow fuel at all, but not a big deal since Pri will serve that purpose.

 

 

[Mech]

Standard taps have on-pri-res. The prime being horizontal.. And yeah, reserve normally works the same as on, under the control of vacuum.

 

Might pay to take the rotating part of the tap out, and check the washer behind it is located correctly..

[Gwbarm]

It will probably work good for many years, I have one on my Eiger that's bad I turn it to prime to fill carb for a minute  and turn it to on I start it after a few minutes it runs out of gas, turn it back to prime and it runs again, I wasn't sure if reserve was vacuum operated because reserve works but on does not. 

[BenderIsGreat]

That sucks, will it not just run on prime?  I think the only bad thing about prime, is the gas doesn't shut off when the engine does.  Could treat 'on' like 'off', and 'pri' like 'on'.

[Mech]

Some early 250 suzukis had a mod which was to fit a little capsule/filter/valve thing into the vacuum line to the tap. The capsule allowed full vacuum to the tap instantly, but had a restriction in the flow going back the other way, so the tap was slow to close.

That might help your new tap...

[BenderIsGreat]

Ahhh, thanks I'll look into that.  It seems to run fine so far, but I'm up for more tinkering.