I want to start by saying I don't know squat about working on 4-wheelers. Please bear with me when I use the "wrong terminology" or poorly explain myself. I really need some help from the experienced folks out there. I'll start by explaining the important things.


I have a 2000 Suzuki LT80 for my daughter that I bought a couple years ago. It's the Canadian model. It had problems last year with the "thumb throttle" sticking, but it would only be the first 10 seconds of riding it and then be fine. I sprayed some grease down the cable and hoped for the best. Then the quad sat all this summer without getting ran. I started it about a month ago and the thumb throttle stuck majorly. I had to hold onto it for dear life and quickly shut it off. I replaced the throttle cable immediately thinking this was the problem.


With that replaced, the thumb throttle is moving freely, cable is moving freely, but when I started the 4-wheeler, it still tried to take off on me. Then I thought that maybe the "needle jet spring" was wore out in the carburetor so I replaced it. Now I can't get the thing to start at all! I checked the sequence of putting the carb's "needle jet assembly" back together and I am good there. I checked the spark plug... it has spark. The gas in it is only about 5 months old so shouldn't be any issues there.


If it helps, here are a couple of things I thought I should mention...

I never did anything with the petcock during any of this troubleshooting or maintenance. The petcock on it has RES, FUEL, and PRIME. I've never messed with this and honestly don't know when to, unless I ran out of fuel. It's always been facing up, on FUEL, since I bought it. Have I flooded the engine from not doing anything with this? How can I check/ fix this if so?

Just so I could see how the whole "needle jet assembly" sits down in the carburetor, I removed the air inlet hose in front of it. It doesn't seem like that whole assembly lets the jet needle seat all the way down, but maybe that's supposed to be like that?

There is still a lot of room for the "thumb throttle" to move, but the throttle cable and "needle jet assembly" only let it go so far. Is this normal?


Any feedback would be appreciated. Trying to keep from taking this thing into a shop.

 

Make sure the throttle slide[piston] is installed correct there a little pin that ride in narrow groove in slide sometime if 180 degree off it will idle fast and wont let it start sometimes

 

The throttle slide goes down onto another pin which is threaded into the side of the slide and can be adjusted from the outside to give the correct idle speed. The end of the cable needs to be seated correctly in the slide too, it is easy for it to jam part way. The outer cable also needs to be seated correctly.

You need to put the tap on prime if you run out of fuel, or if you have drained the carb. As soon as it starts go back onto run because, on prime, if the float needle sticks it fills the cylinder with fuel, on run the tap turns off when the engine stops.

Make sure the thumb throttle lever is free, the most common reason for a sticky throttle is the lever pivot seizing, especially after a long lay up.