Purely speculating here. I would bet there are quite a few petcocks that would leak if given the chance right now. However, the float needles are doing their job for now, so this goes unnoticed. That day when a grain of rust or sand meets it's new friend the float needle, there will be trouble. Kind of hard to prevent other than replace or rebuild every few years. Connie owners are notoriously frugal. Why fix something that isn't broke......
Experience has me disagreeing with this statement. In my experience with these carbs, here are some observations;
1) as time / miles progress, and wear occurs, the fuel levels creep upward. This is the ordinary state of affairs. Given enough time, the fuel levels are getting dangerously close to overflowing even with a properly functioning petcock.
2) fuel valves / floats are intended to control the volume and level of the fuel, they really aren't up to the task of holding a full tank of fuel nor were they intended to.
3)Given the ordinary wear mentioned in #1, all it takes is one needle to start leaking to reduce the pressure... and there's the setup for a hydrolock.
And to Salnap, here's some more info, just to get you up to speed... I don't know how long you've owned your 1000 or what your experience with these bikes / carbs is. I will tell you that I've been dealing with these bike for 10 years, I've done over 500 sets of carbs in the last 5 years, and lot's of experience before that when prior to offering my carb services. "Back in the day" the biggest amount of posting and discussion swirled around carb work, rebuilding, problems, etc. In fact hydrolock really wasn't even as known as it is now. there was no hydrolock rod test, etc. When I and a few others started seeing more and more reports of bent rods, looking for a viable, inexpensive fix evolved. there was also a large contingency of folks who tried and tried to do thier own carb work with miserable results. Maybe really getting the carbs right isn't as easy as you may think.
Today, many of the connie owners you see here are long time owners with many years of experience on thier bikes. Enthusiasts of a discontinued model, and many own more than one. What you see here is often the best advise developed from years and years of ownership and combined knowledge. Maybe you ought to think about that whenever you get advise from these guys. Most, through years of experience, know what works and what doesn't. they know ALL the options and choose what works for them, you have the same options to make your own choices too. Maybe if you come up with a better option we'll all be onboard with it. Just a thought. steve
