removing gas tank
 

I thought I read here somewhere that you had to turn something off to stop the gas from coming out when you are taking off your tank. I cant seem to find it again; is that what i need to do? The manual dosent say anything about turning anything off.

On the pedcock there is a square nipple that you can turn to shut off the fuel. For fuel to flow you have to put vacuum to the side of the pedcock going to the manifold. If you lift the front of the tank you can see the square nipple on the pedcock. Grab it with a pair of pliers and turn it till it stops then it is shut off, remember to re-open it before bolting the tank down.

Exactly what he said, except i use a small 8MM or 10 MM wrench (forget which one it is) to turn it. Much easier to get the small wrench in there and one pass its done.

No need to turn off the petcock for temporary removal. Just remove the vacuum line (you'll have to anyways) along with the rest of the lines. Some gas will leak out, not from the petcock itself, but from the main lines so it's good to have an old towel tuck above the rear cyliner head.

If the bike is older, sometimes the vacuum operated diaphragm gets stuck in the "on" position and it will flow fuel whether the bike is running or not.

Oh, and it's 8mm.

+1, mine dumped fuel EVERYWHERE when I took the hoses off...I slipped them back on and had to dig around for my siphon. Still ended up with gasoline everywhere...didnt know about the yin-yang at the time :)

mines a 99 and all i did was pull the vacuum line off - i didnt even have to mess with the petcock switch.

Because of tank modding, periodical cleaning, and carb jetting/service, I'd conservatively estimate that I've removed fuel tanks on both of the 98's I've owned somewhere in the 30-50 times range. Never had an issue with a stuck petcock.

Today was NOT your day! :-)

My bike only has 11k miles....but it was a HARD 11k by the previous owner. (Stunted, dropped probably at least twice...he stood on the tank and collapsed the top badly which is why it came off...to be replaced by another tank!)

Everybody's right, I think.

This is what I was thinking too. There is really no reason why you can't turn the petcock with pliers, but if I did it my dad would rise up out of his grave and smack me in the head. ;-)