Mechanic Carb cost question

Hondacb550man

Hondacb550man

New Member
I've got a 74' honda cb550, and ive grown real tired of doing work with it, so I'm giving it to a mechanic. And I'm wondering whats a fair price to agree upon.

Things to fix, to my knowledge:

-The first carb has a piece that needs to be glued to insure that the bike runs.
-Resync

He asked for $250 for a "Complete overlook of the bike. Fluids. Sync the cards. Work at that 1st carb. Basically getting it running where u won't have anymore problems"

What do you guys think? I met him before to take a look at my bike, seems cool, but it's easy to get swindled in this line of business.
 
I guess you gotta ask yourself how many guys are there out there who are even willing to work on 40 year old bikes. It's not like you can take your bike to the local Honda dealer anymore.....

And labour is a big cost on bikes - especially if you're talking about pulling carbs apart.

$250 for "not having any more problems" is pretty cheap IMO - especially if you're sick of wrenching on it.
 
True. Vintage bike mechanics are hard to come by. This guy is a mechanic at a shop, but put up an ad on craigslist for a little money on the side. Trying to make his own shop, and build clientele.
 
Hell I'd pay that without blinking an eye.

Wrenching my bike is getting old. I am tired of "broken-part-of-the-week"... followed by waiting for the UPS truck
to show up with the replacement.
 
What does that 250 get you? Sounds like youre getting off cheap. Is this plus parts? What about rebuild kits? $25 apiece plus $90 per carb,not rack) to rebuild and bench synch. Our shop alone charges $90 per hour for vintage bike work. And your carbs are missing pieces? Plan on paying twice the quote.
 
no no, i rejetted it already. I think this guy is gonna do some handyman work on the 1st carb. Hopefully using adhesive to this one part (of the physical carb) to get it bck to its originality. Then he'll prlly resync and fine tune some adjustment levels to the carbs.
 
Which part needs glued on? That in and of itself should give you pause. And you rejetted? Why? What mods have you made that warant rejettng?Were the carbs thoroughly cleaned and rebuilt? I only ask because i see people throw good money after bad aall the time. I mean no sense rejettign dirty carbs that may or may not need it.
 
Well I would have to question the glueing of carb parts back together.
That sounds like a back yard hack job to me and there for worth almost nothing. Its one thing to hack your own bike, but its another to do it for money.
I'll also assume that you re jet the carbs for pods or a pipe? Well its not really as simple as just putting one set of jets in and done, there is more tuning then that. to pay someone else to do that for you would run $250 or more around here. and thats just the labor.
BUT if the carbs are broken it sounds like the money would be better spend actually correctly fixing that issue first
 
My bad, when i said rejetting i meant i cleaned and rebuilt them.

It's hard to describe what needs to be glued but essentially the towers (inside of the first carb) that hold the float arm pin, which swings the float (which balanced by the float needle), are in trouble. One of the towers is totaled, so the float arm pin won't hold the float to the right height, which fucks up the balance of gas and air. Then bike won't start.

So one of the towers needs to be fixed to hold the height of the float.

The previous mechanic put come jell cap to synthesize the tower, but it slides everywhere, and i think it needs to replaced.

So my guys going to take care of that, hopefully do a good job.
 
If one of the cast towers that holds the shaft that the float pivots on is broken, honestly, I don't know of anything that would fix it permanently aside from finding a skilled welder (who likely won't want to bother with cast metal carb bodies).

Long term you're going to want a new carb body. Some JB Weld might do the trick to hold things together and be fuel resistant, but I've never had much luck with it.

CB550 carbs are a pain to sync till you know what you're doing and have the right tools. Most shop rates these days range $60-$80 hourly, so 3-4 hours work is reasonable to tackle the broken bit and sync them.

Keep in mind there are no guarantees when it comes to working on old bikes - there's no way this guy is opening the door to you coming back next week when the bike is running rough again, at least not without another $250 in hand.

If you trust the guy $250 is well spent if it's just fine tuning the carbs to get it running nice and smoothly. It takes a while to develop a feel for carbs especially in banks of 4.
 
http://www.randakks.com/Float%20Pivot%20Post%20Repair%20Kit.htm

This makes sense when talking about CBX carbs that run $300 for cores, but on a 550 its not really worth the work and risk in my eyes.
Any JB weld or other glue trick is a temp hack at best. Like duct tape to fix a hole in a fuel tank.....
If it were me I would buy a new rack of carbs, three or four sets of jets, NOT buy emgo pods and start learning to tune
 
I just payed a guy $364 to do that on my cb350. Valves, fluids, took carbs apart cleaned, synched, everything. 350s were his speciality and he had it back to me in 4 days. Drive it to work today and it runs perfect. I would've did it myself but the only day I have off is Sundays and I got tired of having to wait till the next Sunday to work in it some more. I just wanted to ride
 
surffly said:
http://www.randakks.com/Float%20Pivot%20Post%20Repair%20Kit.htm

This makes sense when talking about CBX carbs that run $300 for cores, but on a 550 its not really worth the work and risk in my eyes.
Any JB weld or other glue trick is a temp hack at best. Like duct tape to fix a hole in a fuel tank.....
If it were me I would buy a new rack of carbs, three or four sets of jets, NOT buy emgo pods and start learning to tune
Click to expand...

frugally i can't convince myself to buy another set of carbs, cause of the broken cast tower.

It's a damn shame those towers don't fit my model.

Right now the tower has a gel cap over it, with a hole in it to insert of float's pivot bar. I'm thinking the hole is stretched out or just worn out and is messing up the float's height.
 
a bad carb body is a bad carb body. See how much he would charge you to transfer all your carb guts to a new, used body off e-bay! be done with it. To me, this is a no brainer. I like my bikes to run, consistently. That has the highest value. Pay it, or do it!
 
Frugal is one thing but being cheap to the point of not have a running bike is stupid.
You have to pay to play.
You yourself said you don't have the time toess around with the bike, so why actively not fix and issue that will keep you off the road?
This hobby should be about riding N not how little money you can spend to say you have an old bike in the garage.
Sure if the new carb rack was $500 maybe, but used carbs are less then $100.
Paying money to jury rig junk carbs is a waste
 
maybe your right, but I don't want to buy new carbs just yet. Other then the broken tower, they're in really good clean shape. im optimistic that my mechanic and i can find a fix for it
 
Optimistic aren't you.
Kinda like "I'm not fixing that flat tire...it's still round on the top..."
 
Not at all.. I just think that Surffly is expecting you to learn a bummer of an economic lesson, as do I. But, Charge!
 
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