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Cleaning the carburetors with lemon juice - Honda CX500, GL500, CX650 and GL650

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Soaking and boiling your Honda CX500, GL500, CX650 or GL650's carburetors in lemon juice can be a good way to get rid of deposits before you put them in an ultrasonic cleaner. Heating the carbs up in this manner can also make stubborn emulsion tubes easier to remove or some very stuck carb bodies easier to separate.

Word to the wise - don't use one of your (or your wife or husband's) favourite pots for this. Also... it results in a very strong, very unpleasant smell which will permeate your entire kitchen and surrounding rooms. I do it out in the shed on a plug-in single burner electric cooktop to avoid unpopularity.

First, fill a pot high enough with water to cover the carburetor(s) when they are in there:

Then grab your lemon juice:

Put 90ml of lemon juice into the water, add the carburetors:

Bring it to a boil and let it run for 10 minutes before carefully removing the carbs. If you have stuck emulsion tubes now is the time to attempt to remove them - hold the carb body with an oven glove (be careful if it's fabric and not silicone as the hot water will soak right through to your hand). Otherwise it's time to wash the lemon juice out with water and put them into the ultrasonic cleaner!

Don't leave the carbs in the lemon juice for a lot longer than the suggested time as you can end up staining the aluminium black. The same applies if you are not going to be cleaning the carbs in an ultrasonic straight after - make sure you clean the lemon juice off lest it stain the carbs.

Head back to the main CX/GL carb cleaning page for the next step.