Hard (impossible) to start

[Marilyn Mason]

I cleaned the carburators for my Triumph 650, and both Honda 250XLs using a 
1.5 gallon Branson unit using either soap and warm water or methanol as a 
solvent.  The carburators for the 1984 Honda 250 required methanol as the 
bike had been parked in a barn in the fall of 1988 and switched off.
When I found it in November 2001 it still had the keys in the ignition, 1/2 
a tank of very bad gas and a battery with all the cells split.  But a month 
later I was riding it in the snow in the bush behind my house.

Jim