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Old November 12th, 2011, 09:51 PM   #179
greg737
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Join Date: May 2009

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And there's a good chance that with a little bit of modification the vacuum line on the bike's OEM petcock could be transformed into a return line for the fuel pressure regulator. It wouldn't even be a very tough modification to do.

I noticed a while back that the question of where and how to route the return line from the fuel pressure regulator was the messiest part of the Ecotrons kit.

Of course, if you've got a California-emissions equipped bike you can just re-purpose one of the California tank's extra ports as your fuel regulator return line. But if you don't have a Cali bike then you're faced with either finding and buying another petcock that has a return line design or drilling a hole in your tank to fit a return port (this is the scariest option, fuel tanks are delicate and just waiting to leak or rust).

I think the EX-250's OEM petcock can be easily modified to change the vacuum line into a fuel line. And a fuel injected bike does not need a vacuum actuated petcock so you're free to change it over. On my do-it-yourself fuel injection project I changed the vacuum line into a fuel line for my fuel pump's vapor/bubble line. This was simple to do because all I had to do was remove the vacuum diaphram and it's plastic housing and that turns the vacuum line into a fuel line.

The only question that has to be answered is whether the re-purposed petcock vacuum line can be modified to handle the volume of flow that the Ecotrons kit's fuel regulator needs to put through it. You can see just at a glance that the vacuum port appears large enough where the hose connects to it but inside the petcock you may have to drill/cut/re-shape/enlarge the area that it connects to once it gets inside the petcock body.

One thing that could be modified to provide enough room for the return fuel flow volume is the black plastic spacer that holds the vacuum diaphram. The main feature of the plastic spacer is an open (atmospheric) port at its bottom that allows the diaphram to operate correctly when the engine vacuum line pulls on it. This atmospheric port would have to be closed (filled in, stopped up, plugged) to prevent the petcock from leaking once the vacuum diaphram was removed. Then you could go about the job of removing the necessary metal and plastic from areas inside the petcock to open up a big enough path to handle the fuel flow volume up through what used to be the petcock's vacuum line.

There are a number of good EX-250 petcock pictures in this "Petcock Rebuild" FAQ: http://faq.ninja250.org/wiki/Rebuild...tcock/fuel_tap so you can see the parts I'm talking about.

I believe it's very likely that with some research a bit of ingenuity this idea would work.
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