SOHC vs DOHC carb bodies

[MustangUY]

Hi guys!
First poster here...been lurking the forum sice I got an '81 XS400, and finally have some questions/problems that might benefit others.

While I was cleaning my carbs, I accidentaly broke one of the float holder arms (please see attached pic). I was real careful while dissasembling, still the little rod was stuck and the arm broke after some light pulling on the rod.

The same day I was lucky enough to source a number 2 DOHC carb body from ebay (5 bucks!) and I'm waiting for it to arrive.

My question is: are the carb bodies of DOHC and SOHC reasonably similar so that I could make it fit into my '81 carb assy?


Thank you in advance!

 

[BDxs400]

I believe that they are different but I had a set of DOHC carbs at work from an 82 seca, if you haven't seen yet this website provides the manuals for all xs400s you can check in there. or use the search option to see if there is any other posts about it. I know that the floats in my carbs are on a floating pin instead of a pressed pin. I tried to load a picture but my comp is too slow if you really want a picture I can do it later on tonight. But im quite sure that they will not work for you.

 

[xschris]

The carb in your pick is from a 77-79 sohc xs400. The 82-84 dohc carb won't match up to it.

 

[PIRATEGINGER]

I actually had the same thing happen to my carb. my buddy is a carburetor wizard, but this was unavoidable.
He has a (slightly) newer bike with the same carbs, except they are for his 4cyl bike (i think dohc). they are the same model carbs except there are two extra "tubes" on the bottom side of his.
If we were to swap two for two carbs for my bike (sohc), they wouldn't work?
I have also played with the idea of trying to get that little tab tig welded back on...could that work?

 

[xschris]

The issue using "other" carbs is the metering of the gas. There could be a lot of tuning to get it right or to work at all. If you are going to use other carbs do it in matched sets.

 

[MrStubb]

There are a few comments on this forum including mine about repairing this type of damage. I unfortunately brought mine to a reputable welder near me & ended up replacing the carb set with an older set. It unfortunately is a tough material to weld on. There are a few others who made a replacement tower and with some machining wizardry milled a flat then drilled & tapped or press fit it in place. Several others had some success with an epoxy. My opinion is the machining repair is much better.

 

[rshutchinson]

You can get that leg soldered back on or you can try to epoxy it as well.