Wear on Slides?

[BackRoadBruce]

I'm doing my first every carb work on a CBX. This is a 1982 bike in running condition. I'm adjusting the valves and took the opportunity to pull the carb bank to clean it up.



I have pulled the vacuum caps and pistons (slides?). Each of the pistons shows some wear. See the attached photos. Is this wear normal?

[Mike Nixon]

Bruce -- It *is* normal, but some feel that wear such as that is cause for replacement. I don't. Honda themselves had a replacement program for the Goldwing, which used very similar carbs and had hour-glass wear patterns on the slides after some miles. The replacement slides were anti-friction coated. But as I say, this is fairly common. Resist the temptation to lube these slides when reassembling. You're getting my carb booklet so you will read in there the reason why, but it has to do with the crankcase emissions system and the tendancy for these carbs to gum up due to excess crankcase vapor deposits on the slides. Don't sweat the wear in other words. Just get the carbs clean, back together right, and adjust them carefully, and you'll be fine. Lots of us have over 50,000 miles on our machines with corresponding slide wear and have no problems. Make sure your air filter is working good too, though. :)

[BackRoadBruce]

Thanks Mike. An FYI to others reading this post, this bike has 25K miles on it.