The fuel is suddenly dumping out of the upper drain hose on the carb. It's the hose that is attached to the left side of the carb where the bowl joins to the carb body. What causes this? The lower drain hose on the bowl below the bowl drain screw is fine and not leaking. Why is the fuel leaking out of the upper hose, and how do I fix it? Haven't removed or taken the carb apart yet - thought I would get suggestions here before starting the repair. Thanks!

 

Come on fellas - I need some suggestions! How about it?

 

Your float is stuck in the down position which is allowing more fuel to enter the carb than it needs. The extra fuel is dumping out of the upper overflow drain hose. This is common and it's an easy fix. All you have to do is unstick your float. I'd recommend giving your carb a good cleaning while you have the bowl off. You probably have a lot of varnish from fuel sitting in the carb over the years.

One other thing to check is make sure the float still floats and isn't full of gas. Sometimes they can develop very small holes in them which allows them to fill up with gas and then obviously they don't float. In that case, you'll need to buy a new float. But my guess is it's just stuck and needs cleaning. Good luck.

 

Yep, look over the float needle and seat, which is the actual shut off valve.Sometimes just cleaning them good, and lightly polishing them with scotchbrite is all thats needed. If theres alot of crud, or rust, in the float bowl, then the whole carb needs to be cleaned out, and then put on an inline fuel filter, to keep it from happening again.
You didnt mention the year, but i believe the overflow is supposed to go out the bottom tube, so that probaly means the tube on the float bowl is plugged up, and then it comes out the air vent in the upper hose.

 

Actually, the lower tube on the 230's has a drain screw and it's only for manually draining the carb for when it's going to be sitting for a long time and you don't want the gas in the carb to varnish or get old, or if you're going to take the carb apart and don't want a bowl full of gas to spill everywhere. Otherwise, being in the bottom of the bowl, it would always drain all the fuel out of the bowl and not allow the engine to get any fuel. The upper drain hose is for exactly what it's doing in this case. It's an overflow tube that allows the excess gas to drain if the float malfunctions.

BTW hondabuster, that's an awfully nice looking ALT50 trailbuddy you got there. I've got one exactly like it for my son. I took the engine out to put in an LT50 4 wheeler whose engine needed rebuilding, but I'm going to put the ALT back together one of these days. My front plastic is in bad shape so I retrofitted the front fender from a yellow JR 50 motorcycle. They still make the rear so I put that on new. I wish I had the original front plastic like you have. Pretty rare piece.

 

Thanks, I really got a deal on it too. Too bad i lost it once, doing a wheelie, and broke the back plastic. Still runs great , and the kids are always bombing around the yard on it.
I saw, in a parts finder, the float bowl, and it has the raised brass tube in it, which is usually set to the over flow level. See picture #6 in my gallery. Usually it does double duty as the over flow and the vent. The screw opens up the very bottom slot of the float bowl for draining. I could be wrong, cuz i dont understand the purpose of two vents on the carb, one is usually enough. And the air vent is rather high on the carb, higher than the venturi, so I figured it wouldnt be an overflow.
This is the parts finder I was looking at
lt230 carb
Youve had as many suzi quads...as Ive had suzi motorcycles.

 

thanks for the info guys. I'll try the repair over the weekend and let you all know how it goes.