Before you start that old bike in your uncle's barn...................

Before you try to start a bike that has sat for a year or two make sure that you get the old gas out of the tank and the float bowl.

The gas now a days is pee pee poor when it comes to having any sort of a shelf life. If you try to start the bike, you will cause all the bad gas and contaminates to be sucked up into the little passages in your carb.

Make sure you get all the bad gas out...then try to start. You may need to put some oil in the spark plug hole to seal the rings and bring the compression up to actually get the suck, squeeze bang blow events to occur.  
bald as a bean..old as your dad..but rides like a fool

Agree.
I do this with all my stuff.  
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I love this dirt stuff.

I recently traded a lawn mower for a 1983 zuki dr 100 that had been dismantled by the former owner's dad due to un approved street riding. The kid grew up and the gas in the bike turned into tar

the bike now runs but has a plasic tank, seat, chain, handle bars and more frankinstien parts from my XR-185...the 185 has a timing chain to crankshaft problem and is in storage.

My daughter is going to enjoy the bike. The entire fuel system was clogged. The old tank is still full of tar. I even filled it with steel balls and clamped it in a paint shaker at work...it still was giving me fits...so I robbed the honda..now if I could just keep the back tire holding air  
bald as a bean..old as your dad..but rides like a fool

i just took apert an 84 atc the carb was so gummy i thought my throttle was stuck. also the old gas was green!  

I used an old crock pot to boil the carb. It woked.

The float had a hole so I tought my daughter how to soldier...but still ended up picking up a float on ebay

Runs  
bald as a bean..old as your dad..but rides like a fool

my barn hold nothin but cattle i aint put bikes in there

unless its a "bike barn" like mls  
RIP old dirtrider

P0PEYE:
I used an old crock pot to boil the carb. It woked.

The float had a hole so I tought my daughter how to soldier...but still ended up picking up a float on ebay

Runs

Picked me up a Sonic parts cleaner a while back and that thing works great.  
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I love this dirt stuff.