My 500 has been cutting out and sometimes dying at deep water crossings.The air box is dry.I put dielectric grease in the sparkplug boot but it didn't fix the problem.I read on this forum about rerouting the carb vent lines;I rerouted the two lines that come off the top of the carb to up near the air intake.Is this right? I keep seeing on the highlifter forum people talking about plugging their carb drain lines for water crossing;the only carb drain on mine that I'm aware of is on the bottom of the bowl.It seems to run fine with the lines up near the intake but I haven't had a chance to test in the water.

 

I think you took the words out of my mouth. My 99 model was haveing problems with cutting out and I snorkeled my carb vent lines. So far I've had it rack deep and no problems. I can also find no other carb drain besides the one on the fuel bowl, and thats after looking in the Service manual.

 

Thanks for the info.I guess I need to invest in a service manual.

 

The carb drain is on the bottom of the bowl. Hondas have a small tube coming off the bowl with a 1 way check valve so that gas can get out but water can not get in. From what I have seen that 1 way check valve lasts about 2 months and then no longer works. Then sometimes water will get sucked up there and cause the engine to die. You should not reroute this because it works of gravity. When we ride in water we plug ours with a stick. Then before you haul the quads home unplug it incase it needs to drain due to the shaking on the trailer.

 

Arctic Cats have no tube. They just have a fitting that you put a tube on when you decided to drain the fuel bowl. It is closed off with a crew. I don't think water will get past this, if it does we will just have to put a hose on it and plug that hose.

 

Boner, there should be an overflow somewhere. The drain screw is for when you intentially want to drain the carb like if you got water in there. The overflow is for when the bowl is getting flooded. This usually happens when the quad is off and the gas is still on and it is bouncing around in a trailer. So on a Honda even if the carb drain screw is screwed in it will still let gas out or water in.

 

You can't plug these vents off or it will build too much vacuum and flood the motor with fuel. They are not to prevent the carbs from over filling with fuel they are to keep equal pressure in the carb and out ... Bill

 

Bill, you are correct. The vent lines should never be plugged. Another common mistake is people routing them into their snorkel, which will create a vacuum. If you are snorkeling a quad you need to route them outside the snorkel. The line that I am talking about plugging is the drain line.

The drain line can be seen here in a picture of the bottom of the bowl and here in a diagram of the carb.

 

I think I might have found the drain. I was looking REALY hard at the diagram and there seems to be a hose right in the back of the primer, I;ll look tomorrow.

 

Here's another piece of info. When I raised height of carb vent lines on my 300 I just T'd them & ran single line up to air intake area, worked great. When we did this on a 500, it wouldn't run right we had to remove the T & run each vent seperate.