Carburetor cooling lines
 

While I am getting ready to replumb the cooling lines on my bike to work with the underseat radiator, I noticed that the guy who owned this bike before me removed all of the cooling lines that went to the carbs. Does anyone know if there is any impact to not having these lines installed?

i yanked mine out. i havent had any problems. technically on high humidity days u might get a bit of condinsation of even frost but i think that would be only in extreme cases. i run hopped up ATV's with huge highflowing carbs and tons of velosoty through them, they get cold but hav never had issues with frost or excess condensation.

If you ride just above the freezing point when air is loaded with humidity, the bike may bog a little. The worst may be frozen throttle plates...

While technically "cooling lines" they actually warm the carburetor up to prevent freezing in cool humid environments. So it depends on when you plan to ride the bike and if you will ride it in inclement weather.

a lot ATV's and snowmobiles are carbed and dont run coolant lines to them to be heated. and weve ran in freezing rain and 4 foot of snow. has anyone ever personally experienced a carb freezing?? on a hawk, or heck on anything??

I've had it happen on a snowmobile before, but it is either bitterly cold or in deep snow, or both

Well I had 3 cars that were freezing their throttle plates, you start loosing power, then you close the throttle and it won't close, then checking inside befor it melts showed the carb throat to be 1/3 of it's original size. I turned the engine over not to hydrolock and stopped it right away for 5 mins and was good for another 30 miles, it took a lot of gas. Then I fixed the hot air intake of the car. On the VTR the slides may stick and the mix will be off and will probably die. This happens because of the gasoline chilling effect, when it evaporate it removes some heat (put gas on your hand and it feels cold) and freezes the air witch can no longer hold it's moisture that is deposited on the surrounding surfaces forming some ice.

Too cold to freeze the carbs on a snowmobile. More likely on a cool foggy day. When it is cold enough to freeze than all the humidity in the air gets frozen out and the air is very dry. But on a foggy day, the increase in velocity of the air getting pulled into the carb along with the vacuum created by the intake stroke can cool the air or the carbs enough to cause ice to build up on the carbs. Here is an article about it for airplane carbs, but the same applies to motorcycles, but not quite as common: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carburetor_heat