Hello, John Talley here with partzilla.com.
Today I'm going to show you how to clean the carburetor on our 2003 Honda Rancher 350 two-wheel-drive
manual.
Pretty simple to do, just need to get the air box pulled out of the way, remove the
carburetor, and we'll get it over to the teardown bench and I'll pull it apart and show you
how to rebuild it.
So if you're ready, we can get started.
Alright, this is going to be a skill level two, but let's go over some of the tools that
we're going to need to get this done.
10mm with a fairly long extension, a Phillips and flat blade, also you want to make sure
you have a long reach Phillips.
Not sure if we're going to need it, but if you have any Phillips screws that are tough
you're going to need one of these impacts.
Other than that, need a 7mm, a 10 and a 14mm just regular wrench.
A pair of needlenose pliers, a pair of side cutters, pick tool, and just a soft blow hammer.
Now as far as the parts, you'll want to reference our parts diagrams, and there's one of two
ways you can go about doing this: you can either A) just go with a kit from Moose which
has all the pieces or you can reference the parts diagram which has everything exploded
out which you can reference to pick out the particular parts that you may need to rebuild
your particular machine.
Plus it makes it a lot easier looking at the diagrams when it comes time to put it all
back together.
So, once you have your tools and the parts that you need for your machine together, we'll
go over there and I'll show you how to do it.
Alright, let's start by going ahead and turning off the fuel.
What you want to do is turn the petcock over on this side just 90 degrees and that will
shut it off.
And I want to go ahead and loosen up these two clamps.
There's one going to the carburetor and then there's on going up to this upper breather
tube.
And now you're looking for a section at the bottom of the airbox assembly and it's just
one 10mm bolt that we're trying to get to.
Now, we should be able to just pull this back off the carb and then move that intake tube
off of it as well.
To give us a little bit more working room, we're going to remove this little plastic
rivet.
To remove the crankcase breather hose it just has a little spring clamp on it.
I'd go ahead and take it off so you don't lose it because it's going to come up with
the airbox.
Now, we can go ahead and remove the front clamp that's going to the intake.
It'll be facing the right side of the machine, and it's on the bottom.
so just loosen that up.
Now, I want to go ahead and disconnect the negative on the battery.
What we're doing right now doesn't involve anything with turning on the machine, I just
want to go ahead and remove any possibility of any sparks at all because now that it's
actually disconnected from the machine, it still has fuel in the bottom of the float
bowl and when I start to move it around it's going to leak and it's going to run down the
backside of the engine.
So we want it to be electrically dead so we don't ignite that fuel.
We've got a few different vent hoses we need to disconnect.
We need to go ahead and do the throttle and the choke.
And the throttle's actually behind this plastic cover right there, and that's just held in
by a single Phillips.
Lift that cover up and then it just pulls out like that.
Now, we can go right here where the cable goes into the top of the carb.
Push that boot up and just loosen off that pinch bolt.
Once you've got that, then you can back this all the way out and now we can feed it through
this channel.
And then swing it all the way around to where it lines up with this other channel at the
bottom of this arm.
And then we're just going to pull it straight up.
Next, we need to remove the choke cable, and it just threads straight in.
And this is just plastic, so remember when you're putting this back together you really
don't have to crank down on it very much.
Alright, the reason we're actually pulling this one apart to clean it is the machine
would start, but after that it really didn't want to idle.
So that's typically indicative of what they call the slow jet or the small jet being stopped
up.
Alright there's one more connection we need to get, and it's actually an electrical connection
right here.
Reach in where this little section is where my finger is, and there's a little plastic
tab.
Pull it toward you and then that'll release the connector.
Nice and nasty.
Alright, she is out.
So let's take her over to the teardown bench and get it pulled apart.
Alright, before we start splitting this open, let's use a little bit of just our contact
cleaner to get this cleaned up a bit because well, we're trying to keep all of this out
of it, you know?
So I'm going to go ahead and flip it upside down, go ahead and empty out the float bowl.
Definitely have on a pair of glasses when you do this because you do not want to spray
this and have it go back into your eyes.
We're going to start by getting the slide out of the way.
Depending on if your carburetor has every been pulled apart or not, sometimes these
Phillips can be hard to break loose.
Now this one is not in that bad a shape.
But if it were, these are very easy to strip out.
So, if you haven't bought one of these little manual impacts, you need to pick one up.
Get it like that.
Pop it.
And that shock will break it loose.
You'll notice the carburetor's on a piece of wood.
Just to keep, you know, from potentially scarring up or breaking the bottom of the float bowl.
Now take notice where this hose clamp it.
just keep in mind that it's across from where the throttle cable is connected.
Get out our spring.
You want to look around the diaphragm, see what kind of shape it's in.
Make sire there are no holes anywhere on it.
No rips, no tears.
Next, let's go ahead and get off our float bowl.
Same scenario with the screws on the bottom.
If they don't want to immediately break loose, then you want to get out that impact again.
Not too bad.
I do see a little bit of sediment down in the bottom.
Plus you can see this kind of green gel around here.
Also can tell it's been a while since anybody has been in here because that lower O-ring
is flat as a pancake.
So I'm really surprised it wasn't leaking.
So the kit I'm using is actually from Moose racing, and it actually comprises all the
different jets and the adjustment screws and the valve needle seats and the springs and
everything you would need to rebuild this.
Alright let's go ahead and get that float bowl pin out.
If it was in there the same way it was from the factory, it actually has a set of splines
if you're looking at the carburetor from the bottom right there.
So we want to push it toward that direction.
So I want to take this bottom edge and just rest it on the edge of the wood.
That way we reduce the chance that we're actually going to break the carburetor.
There.
Now, go ahead and pull that out and then lift out the float.
As you can see that little needle just dropped right off.
So, looking at it is was a little green.
It wasn't leaking or anything like that but you can see a little bit of a groove where
it was resting in its seat.
Alright, let's go and get the main jet out.
And I pretty much know that it's going to be open, but if you hold it up and you can't
see through it, it's definitely stopped up.
that one looks to be okay.
Now here's the one I believe that is stopped up.
It's what they call the idle jet. and no I cannot see through this one.
Now granted it's going to be a much smaller diameter hole, but I should be able to see
some type or light coming through there and I can't.
The other thing I want to take a look at is the idle mixture screw which is on the backside.
Now to determine where it was set from the factory, which I think is probably two and
a quarter turns, we can take it and just mark where it was and go all the way in and see
where it stops.
And there's a couple of different pieces to it.
You have the main section there and then there's also a spring.
Down at the very bottom is a tiny little O-ring and a washer.
What I want to do at this point is use some of our carburetor cleaner because I think
we can just spray out some of these orifices and then get her put back together.
If you don't think you could see down through the jet, what you do is actually use some
of your carburetor cleaner and just put it at the top and see if you can squirt it through
the end.
That should be flowing straight through, but it's barely burbling through.
This one is stopped up, that is for certain.
Before we start actually blowing our the different passageways, let's go ahead and get some of
this crud cleaned off the bottom.
Be careful not to gouge any of this surface.
I'm actually just using the edge of this.
all this stuff comes off fairly easy.
I just want to give the new O-ring a fighting chance of sealing up, you know?
Alright, so, let's spray out this choke.
We can go to the idle.
Air-fuel.
Main, I pretty much already know it's going to be open.
And then let's make sure there's nothing in where the float jet goes.
Alright, so let's start putting her back together.
Some pieces I will replace, others I will stay with the factory.
Let's start with our pilot jet.
This one looks like it's seen better days, so we're go going ahead with a new one.
So let's build it up.
So the real trick here is to get it all lined up and keep it vertical.
And put it all in there as one assembly.
We're going to bring it in until it bottoms out.
just go in until it lightly seats.
Alright at this point, factory setting is to come out one and three quarters.
Now I counted when we took it apart, somebody had it set to right at two and a quarter.
So I'm going to split the difference and just come out two turns.
The reason that this even exists, you can adjust for your different changes in altitude.
If you were running at a real high altitude, you'd only run this maybe one turn out versus
two.
Next let's go ahead and take a look at what I call our slow jet.
There are no O-rings.
Let's go ahead and drop her in.
And this one you just go until it's seated.
Alright, our main is actually made up of two different pieces.
You actually have the jet that goes up top and you have what they call an emulsification
tube that goes into the carburetor.
So this piece is actually two separate pieces, but believe me they are welded together by
this point.
So you put those together and that's what you end up with.
Alright I do want to put just a little bit of torque on that so it doesn't come apart.
Don't overtighten, just snug it down.
There's also one they call I think it's a start jet.
It has something to do with the priming bulb on the side.
Since we're in it, they sent it with the kit, let's go ahead and pop it in there.
Alright with that, I am going to go ahead and replace the float bowl needle.
Slide it into that slot, leave it in this position so it doesn't fall out and guide
it back in there.
Go ahead and push that pin back through.
And we want to use our little piece of wood again, rest it on the edge, and just tap it
back in.
It doesn't have to be flush.
There's plenty to hold it in place.
Alright, lay in our O-ring, make sure it's in the groove all the way around.
Take your carburetor, working with gravity, and there.
You may or may not have noticed that there's still several pieces left over form the kit.
Actually I'm not going to be using the new ones.
I'm going to keep in the factory.
Let's go ahead and put this slide assembly back in.
Make sure that this section lines up right there.
Go ahead and put in our spring.
And put on that upper cover.
And make sure that that section lines up with that little protrusion on the corner.
This little clamp remember went opposite of where the throttle cable comes in, so it goes
over on this side.
Alright, well that's got it back together, let's take it back over to the machine and
get reinstalled.
Before we get he carburetor on, some of our rubber hoses are starting to show some wear.
I didn't order new ones because I didn't realize they were broken.
What we're going to do is we're going to cheat a little bit.
We're just going to trim them down, cut off the bad section, and see if we can reattach
them.
We'll get this little clamp in place to hold it.
We'll just do everything else back in reverse.
Guess we'll do the choke cable next.
Rotate it over and get our throttle cable in there.
Be very careful not to cross-thread it.
That looks about right.
Then remember to bring that upper boot back over the top of it.
Let's get on these two vent lines.
First one goes here.
And the other one goes on the other side right here.
Then put that little clamp over the top of it.
Go ahead and get our fuel line back on.
There's one more piece that needs to go on, and that is this cover for the throttle cable.
Slides into that little slot at the bottom, and then it's just one screw and that large
washer.
Now slide it back on the intake boot.
Make sure it's vertical.
We're gonna tighten down that clamp.
Now, we can go ahead and get our airbox back on.
We've got that pickup tube that's running up here for the air intake.
Make sure it's all the way flush up there.
Alright.
Let's go ahead and get these tightened down.
Don't forget this little plastic rivet.
Then, get this little 10mm on on the bottom of the airbox itself.
The last connection we need to make is for that little carb heater wire.
Grab it, bring it across, and get it plugged back in.
And the last thing we have is this little vent right here for the crankcase.
Now, hook up the battery.
We'll turn the gas back on and see what it does.
That sounded a whole lot better.
Alright you'll notice when I first started it up it was idled way high.
You want to know why that was?
Evidently this thing's had a problem with that slow jet being stopped up, and how they
compensated for it is they brought the idle up to where it more or less bypassed the low
circuit to keep it what it was supposed to be doing.
They actually went into the high circuit to make the machine idle.
So, pretty much figured that was going to happen, and so it's definitely good to go
now.
All we've got to do now is get our seat back on and she's ready to go hit the trail.
Well listen, if you need any of the parts that we used to do this, come see us at partzilla.com
and we can get you taken care of.
If you have any questions or comments, leave them in the section below and I'll do my best
to answer them.
And until next time, we just want to say thanks for watching.