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I recently survived the legendary "gas tank drains into crankcase" phenomenon. It really can -- and does -- happen. At least to dumbasses like me. Although I had started the engine, luckily I discovered what was happening before I got to the end of my driveway. A roughly 50/50 oil/gas mixture came spurting out of my breather tube and onto my foot. I drained the oil/gas mixture, let the bike sit for a couple weeks with the filter, drain plug and filler cap off -- hoping any gas left in there would evaporate. Then I put new oil and filter in. I ran the bike for a few minutes, then changed the oil/filer one more time. The bike seems to be OK! I'm not sure how the gas got from the carb to the cylinder (stuck float & clogged overflow?), but it got from the tank to the carb because I reassembled the petcock wrong . . .

Yeh been there and done that also, guess I picked it up early before I started the bike, my '79 has a sidecar attached and I put on a later model clutch cover with the bigger sight glass, so because the bike is pretty well level i've gotten into the habit of looking at the oil level as I get on the bike, one day the level of oil was just too high, couldn't see any air line in the sight glass, seems the old petcock was ok but a float had stuck open, I took out the plugs and two cylinders were pretty full of fuel and whatever leaked past the rings filled the crankcase. My fault really, just got complacent and never turned off the fuel tap one time too often, changed the petcock to the vacuum operated one, and changed the fuel needle valves because the replacement ones I got were hanging up, drained the oil, changed filter and all is well. I still check the sight glass before every start, easy routine and saves a lot of heartache, glad you also got your problem before any damage was done, guess we could say we flushed out the crankcase of any "sludge" the hard way, cheers Pete.

I haven't been inside my carbs -- is there an overflow tube that could avoid this scenario? The Kawasaki parts exploded view of the carbs didn't give me any clues . . .

There is no overflow on our carbs - just into the cylinders and air box

Maybe a project for some of our forum boffins.

.....Go to the COG (concours owners group) web site....search "shoodaben" "steve"...offers this service for $80. send him your float bowls
and he returns them as you want them to be.