The original 22mm Keihin carb on my ’74 CL125S has been just driving me crazy. I’ve disassembled it, soaked it in Chem-Dip, fiddled, fussed and futzed with it. It runs great one moment, then rev it up and the idle will suddenly be 1000 RPM higher or lower a moment later. It can run great out on the street for 10-20 minutes and then die suddenly at speed and be unwilling to restart. I decided to get another carb entirely.
The 22mm carb is only available as astronomically expensive NOS nowadays. On the other hand, I didn’t want to complicate things further by going super cheap and getting one of those generic pit-bike carbs off Ebay, with their pot-metal bodies and mystery-meat jetting.
I ended up ordering a Nibbi PE24 Keihin clone a few months back. If you’re not familiar with Nibbi, they are a Chinese company, but a very well-respected brand that makes top-tier products. According to the spec sheet, it has a #105 main and a #32 pilot installed, but I haven’t actually opened it up. An extra pilot and three extra mains were included in the box. Since I’d previously tossed the original airbox/battery box/toolbox assembly, I was going to need a pod air filter anyway.
The PE24 doesn’t mount up the same as the original, so I had to make a custom intake bracket to adapt a rubber flange to the head. Overall, I think it turned out great. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a replacement carb with right-side adjustment screws and choke, which will be slightly problematic on my bike.
