vapor lock, and more

[William K Denton]

Jim said, "The manual petcock is only as good as the operator as I found out 
this morning."
------------------------------------------------------------------

Jim,

Agreed.  However, at least with a manual shut-off, you can correct the 
"behavior" [no one to blame but yourself].  With a vacuum shut-off tap, you 
are at the mercy of the rubber supplier's QC and the ravages of time and 
fuel reformulation effects on elastomers [everyone to blame but yourself].

On the brighter side, the OEM petcock packing (4-hole rubber gasket P/N 
43049-1075) is cheap (<$5.00) and plentiful, as it is used in Vulcans, 
ZX6's, ZX9's ZRX's, GPz's and ZX11's.  At that price, one should just add 
"replace every five years" to the scheduled maintenance routine in the shop 
manual.

Bill Denton
Yardley, PA
wkdenton at verizon.net
Lazarus Cycleworks, LLC
Breathing New Life into Old Bikes