Bridgestone Motorcycle Parts Discussion Board
Bridgestone Tech Talk => 350 Talk => Topic started by: Stoneman on April 14, 2022, 11:39:16 AM
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Regarding an early ‘67 350 model, what are the lever positions (1 or2), for full vs reserve fuel in tank? My gasket behind the lever is in poor condition and won’t allow a simple test. Thanks. And does anyone know where to get a new gasket, or a good way to make one?
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Hi Steve, the positions are as follows...
O - Off
1 - On
2 - Reserve
Also, Richard has seal kits for these on Ebay.
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Thanks, Moonpup!
I’ll try Richard after I finish my experiment with a hack to the gasket. Got the idea on an older thread on the forum. I’ve used a wine bottle cork, the kind that uses small bits of ground up cork that’s molded to shape and held together with some type of glue. I first sliced off a few thin pieces, punched a few holes in them then soaked them in gasoline for 24 hours. They held together fine, and swelled a bit as you might expect.
Then I removed the petcock lever, spring washer and old gasket. Next, I cut a slice of cork as close to the same thickness of the original gasket as possible, using a sharp knife. Checking the cork diameter, found to my delight it was perfect! So, I then pressed the cork in position to hopefully make an impression of where the holes needed to be punched. Worked perfectly. Lastly, used a hole punch to make the holes.
Reassembled the petcock lever, added some gas to the tank to test. No leak in off position, no leak in on position, slight leak in reserve. I’ve let it all set overnight to gibe the cork time to swell, hoping the swelling will cure the slight leak on reserve. Will report back when I test again later today.
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UPDATE: The cork gasket continued having a slight leak from the face of the lever position changer. My guess is the gasket was just a bit too thin to properly seal things up when the lever was in the reserve position. So I made another gasket that was slightly thicker, about 1/8” but not more than 3/16”. The gasket making only takes about 10 minutes. The second gasket is working like a charm with no external leaks and no gas exits the the petcock internally when in the off position. Just have to wait and see how long it will last. My guess is a couple years, at least.