Review on Outlaw Racing OR3440 Fuel Petcock Valve Shut Off Repair Rebuild Kit - For Suzuki DR-Z400S DR-Z 400SM & Kawasaki KLX400SR by Mike Donathan

I bought a used 2003 DRZ400S from the first owner 8 years ago. I've read a lot about this and learned about the leaking fuel tap issue that many DRZ owners have reported. It turns out that when the factory valve flows in, the gas goes through the valve of the valve into the fuel line, into the carburetor, and then into the crankcase of the engine. A gas-filled crankcase blocks the engine - this is not very good. Although my faucet doesn't leak (and my DRZ400S was 9 years old when I bought it), I decided to buy a non-vacuum faucet as recommended on online forums (the Yamaha Raptor faucet was perfect for the DRZ400S and was an on- from the faucet) - Yamaha part number 5LP-24500-01-00) and it was "ready to use" when my original DRS400S faucet started leaking. Well the years went by and the factory faucet decided to leak 17 years after the bike was made - not a bad run! I installed a Yamaha faucet and it solved my problem. BEFORE. One day I was done with that and forgot to turn off the faucet. Because the faucet was in the "on" position, it treated the fuel as if the factory faucet was "leaking" and simply flowed right through the open faucet, through the carburetor, and back into the crankcase! UGGH! Keep in mind that this was not the fault of the Yamaha cranes, it was my fault for leaving them in the "on" position. The bottom line is that the original DRZ400 faucet uses vacuum pressure to act as the circuit breaker for the faucet. When the engine is off, there is no vacuum and the fuel supply is shut off. When the engine is running, a vacuum line is connected to the valve, which sucks the internal piston in the valve and opens the fuel supply. Very smart (until it leaks inside). Of course, you can turn off the auto feature and have constant "fuel” by turning the tap on in Prime mode, labeled "PRI.” Since my last crane worked great for 17 years, I decided to restore it with Outlaw Racing Rebuild. kit. That would bring me back to the auto fuel shutoff. The kit included everything needed to restore a factory DRZ400S crane. However, the two supplied mounting screws were too short. I just reused the original screws (see the screw note at the bottom of my review). It was very easy to figure out what went where, there isn't much inside the faucet. The only thing that confused me was the very thin rubber gaskets that had to go over and under the plastic gasket. This seal is not included in the recovery kit, you are expected to reuse the original. Since the kit does not come with any instructions, I didn't understand it at first. The second question was how to fit the new thin rubber gaskets to the original plastic gasket. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DISASSEMBLE A VALVE WITH A THIN RUBBER SEAL! What you have to do is simply pry the old flimsy rubber grommets out of the plastic spacer. Then, very, very carefully, thread a "tab" of the new rubber grommets through the hole in the plastic spacer. You want the new thin rubber grommets to look like you removed the original assembly from the faucet. 99% of people can figure it out in 20 seconds. It took me 10 minutes so I wrote it down here. In fact, the total recovery time from start to finish was about 6 minutes (not counting the 10 minutes I spent figuring out how to swap out the new flimsy rubber grommets for the plastic spacer). I put a rebuilt factory faucet back on the DRZ400S. and it worked like new. Hopefully he lasts another 17 years. But in the meantime I have a spare Yamaha Raptor crane just in case. One last note: I replaced the fuel tank tap on the bike. It was a very tight fit to insert and remove the rear crane bolt. I would suggest buying two pan head screws of the correct length. This allows you to use a long allen wrench to remove the screws and then reinstall them. It would have been much, much easier if I had known that before I started.