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Well it did not take the old girl long: following a lot of work over the past year and a great deal of initial promise, she has again thrown a strop and wants nothing more than to laze around in my garage. All joking aside, its so frustrating that I just got her runnning perfectly after a couple of challenging years, and 200 miles later its yet another problem - in itself its no big issue, carbs off again and investigate why she dumpimg fuel out the airbox (I guess float sticking open) - but collectively it feels like "The death of a 1000 cuts".

I love riding my Z13, but am surprised how unreliable my Z13 appears in comparison to other old bikes I am fortunate enough to own - got me thinking if other owners had similar experience. Still, I can't see me selling her anytime soon
Cheers Tim

There's one check you may want to look at and it's often overlooked when adjusting floats. There is a tang on the float which prevents the float from dropping so low that the float needle comes out of the needle seat to a point where the needle will bind when the float tries to close the needle seat and causes a flooding condition.
Another issue can be when the neoprene tip on the needle hardens and doesn't fully seat in the needle seat. You should be able to pinch the neoprene with your finger nail and remove and not see an imprint from your nail.
Last but not least, there has been quite a few issues with the spring wire that attaches to the needle and engages on the float tab. The aftermarket needles come with the replacement wire and that wire doesn't fit worth a shit. Anyone who had your problem in the past especially with those needle retaining wires, replaced the wires with the original wires and all got well. Pretty sure Scotch posted this subject with pics of the bad and good wires last year.

I think the article KB is referring to, from myself, was about making my own needle retaining springs. I do recall seeing the side-by side pictures of OEM vs Aftermarket.

A point worth bringing up with respect to KB's valid comment about "Float-drop". My Brass Floats are designed differently. I set the maximum float drop during assembly and therefore there is no user-adjustment available or required.

A couple of things I found with my A5 are:

The float seats have a clip over the needles so they cant fall out regardless of how far the float drops.

The tips of the needles are steel, no neoprene (I found that a bit odd).

Even after rebuilding my carbs with new jets, needles, seats, float valves, seats they will still flood overnight if the fuel is left on.

Tim those floats were a PITA from the day I got my 13. The carbs were the single biggest problem with them and caused 2 people I know to get rid of their bike in very short order.
Even the crappy coils couldn't hold a candle to those things.

Sorry to hear of your problems Tim i know how frustrating these bikes are but with help from the people on this site you will get there i think scotchs floats will be the answer you need i am going to order some myself cheers Graham