I'm working on my Uncle's 1st Gen 700 magna. The carbs are a mess. I've dealt with worse, and they're getting back into shape, but I wanted some 3rd (or 4th or 5th) opinions about cleaning the slides. His are sticking pretty badly. Not just shut, sometimes when you open them by hand the slides stick open. What is a safe way to clean the slides? I'd hate to accidentally use anything that damage the fragile/expensive diaphrams. Also, are you supposed to lube them with anything? Can you lube them with anything? I've never had a set sticking like this that I felt lube might be necessary, but these are pretty bad.
I've only ran across slides in that bad of shape a time or two and that was usually on an old dirt bike. What I usually did was polish the slides with some VERY fine sand paper and this always freed them back up to good working order. Maybe some others in here will have a better idea than this; hopefully they will chime in if so.
Nope fine sandpaper should do the trick gas will not harm them either !!!