Need to soften up some rubber carb boots!!!

JD Seller

Well-known Member
My youngest son has an older four carb motorcycle. The rubber boots are hard and allowing some vacuum leaks. A new set of boots are over $200. The old boots are not weather cracked but are just hard. On line they say boiling them in water with wintergreen oil will soften them. Well we do not have any wintergreen oil today. Do you fellows know of any other way to soften rubber up???
 
Thats a tough one, any idea of the material ?

I still have a pair of yamaha maxims in the back of the heated basement/garage since about '93 or so and the older of the 2 needed those replaced on the engine side, heat or age seemed to crack them. I was working a low paying job in those days, but could afford them through the dealer then, still recall them not being exactly cheap, but I could still afford everything I needed for the 650 maxim, darned reliable and affordable transportation in those days.

Mine were cracked but there was no issue at the time, it looked worse. Hard to figure given the rubber, you could easily ruin them, certainly know about the problem with the '80, funny how the '81 never did this, wonder if they changed materials?

A quick search on Bike Bandit, shows OEM ones for an '82 650 $22.67, air cleaner to carb, and if I recall theres another set from the carb to the engine, you;d think those would be the same but maybe not given they are on the other side.

What make, model year is it? This supplier will likely have it, they are to bikes, atvs and such as Numrich Arms/Gunparts is to guns from what I recall, very similar set up with all they cover in parts.


Well upon further investigation, I see the other set on this model are different and were cut off from view, those are $77, so a set for each side of a carb is $100.00 + OEM that is, did not check aftermarket.
Bike Bandit
 
Well, try some Marvel Mystery Oil... it's reputed to be essentially oil of wintergreen!
 
Throw the in the clothes dryer and heat them up good. We do that for hard rubber door glass gaskets. Softens them right up.
 
I had some rubber parts for the glass on my 55 wagon that weren't being reproduced. In my case the parts were small enough to coat in Vaseline and put in a jar. By the time I needed them they were as soft as they day they were made.
 
Back in the day when we raced cars people used a tire softener. I believe the product name was called Gumball tire softener.
Ron
 

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