I have a chilton's manual, followed the directions, and it just didn't happen. The bike sat for about a year and used to have a fuel leak. The old tank was shot to crap and full of sparkling (no joke) rust. We replaced the tank, battery and spark plugs. It was running GREAT for a while. Now it does the dreaded over-rev and won't come down. Sprayed carb cleaner all over, nothing. Figure some fleck of rust is stuck somewhere in the carbs messing them up, and I would just love to clean those suckers out if I could just get the stinking things off.

Disclaimer, the following descriptions will have a lot of "thingies", as I am no mech. I removed the tank, and loosed the screws on the hoses per the instructions. When I "carefully pulled the carbs back" nothing happened. I pulled back, forward, side to side, removed the stiffer hoses attached to the manifold (pouring gas alllllll over) but couldn't get the added chunks of metal around the manifold, tried to wedge in a screwdriver, used tons of different positions for leverage, everything that I could think of. I reread the manual a billion times, but it still had the same four-step "just do this and voila" thing I tried to do. I was able to free it from the hoses in the back, sorta, but just couldn't get that front end off. Am I missing something or do I just have the muscle the crap out if it and hope there's a replacement part for anything I break? Is there a how-to vid somewhere?

i am no mech either but maybe if we talk about enough wizzles and dodads those carbs will just fall off laughing?

on the engine side of the carbs there should be 2 rubber mounts that the carb slides into. Around those rubber mounts there will be 2 clamps, did you take the clamps off?

take the air box boot out, and then you should just pull the carbs back, maybe a little wiggling will be in order.

the rubber will have hardened with age (bit like us really)

best to soften by using a hair dryer and then taking the air cleaners off first then the crankbreather (hard one, brute force needed and leave to one side connected to the hoses) then the carb to air filter hoses.They are a sod sometimes and you need to wiggle them up and down and pull back at the same time.

tilt the carbs up and down and pull back like the hoses and they should come out

You have to take the 2 airboxes off first, then the stiff hoses that lead to the carbs. This should give you enough slack in order to take the carbs off the stiff hoses that lead to the intake manifold. This is the easy way to take it off and the ONLY way to put it back on.

We just cleaned our 1978 XS400 carbs yesterday.