Hello, can anyone tell me what this crud is inside my carb? I am attempting my second rebuild after the first one was successful on my other Harley. Same carb on both my Electra Glide and my son's Sportster, both 93's so I figured why not.

Thanks

 

1. Corrosion from ethanol gas left to sit too long.
2. Maybe some crud from the gas tank that made it past the petcock fuel screen or your fuel screen is torn and needs replacing.
3. Maybe some crud from internal deteriorating of the fuel lines.

NOTE:
The above information, while credible, is worth what you paid for it and should not be considered gospel.
Do due diligence, research and have a H-D Field Service Manual before working on your bike.
You will probably have many opinions and suggestions presented; make sure you research the person providing the helpful information as there are some who provide good information and some who speak out of other orifices with gibberish. You will figure out this quickly.

 

looks like 30 years of crud. How do the tank look?

 

Thanks! That darn corn. All jokes aside, I'll tackle those things you mentioned.

 

The tank looks pretty clean. Someone suggested to check the filter on the petcock or other fuel lines. Thanks

 

My view: Corn is for making Whiskey, not Ethanol!

 

Ye divn't ken much laddie, when you mash and distill corn it makes ethanol (consumable alcohol), it comes out of the still at about 96% pure ethanol.

Ethanol can be made from any type of grain, barley, wheat, oats, or corn, etc.

 

My guess is you need to remove the petcock. That's probably the screen.

Replace petcock with a vacuum one since it's a safety item that shuts off fuel just in case you ever forget.

I would flush tank of course with petcock out.

PS. You only been here a short time, so Welcome for sure.. Great first post. Your on a roll now and only as a suggestion, make your next new post over in the new member welcome area to say hello.

 

I am going to respectfully disagree here. I think the vacuum petcock is more of an environmental safegaurd than a safety one. I have had several safety related issues with the vacuum petcock and zero with the non-vacuum pingel I replaced it with. I lost vacuum on the freeway in Los Angeles killing the bike suddenly in the fast lane. The second incident was when the metal fitting in the factory petcock actually came out, again while in the fast lane on the freeway, dumping massive amounts of fuel directly onto the hot engine. A frightening situation. I thought I was going to die in a fireball. I learned it actuall takes spark (or a lot more heat) to really get gas to ignite. I accidently leave my petcock open all the time and it has never leaked out the carb.

 

I never saw opening or closing the petcock as a chore. It's just something you do, like turning the key on. I had a vacuum petcock on a little Kawasaki sport bike go bad out on the road. After waiting and cranking a few times it got a good enough seal to open again. All these idiot proofing improvements annoy us dinosaurs no end. EFI, body computers, ignition computers, sensors all over, digital readouts, tuners, downloads, parameters, trouble codes, GPS, comm systems, on and on. RRRRrrrr.
It ain't no airliner, man. I just wanna go for a ride.