Honda NT650 Hawk GT tip: leaky petcock repair

So you've got a leaky petcock...

All-Balls Racing sells a rebuild kit, part number 60-1219, which has a bunch of O-rings along with the valve body rubber bit.

But if you have tools and want to do it cheaper, here's what I did, using parts from azmotorsports.com and advice from the HawkGT list.

  1. remove the petckock from the bike.
  2. put it in a vice like this:

    picture of petcock in vice

  3. Drill out the rivets very carefully, so you only get the very top of the rivet drilled out, just the part that's rolled over the top edge of the cover plate. I used a 5/32" drill bit.

    arrows pointing to rivets

    drill only enough to get the cover off, this is like 1 mm down, or maybe less.

  4. remove the top

    cover off

  5. remove the valve, it should look like this:

    inside inside

    you can see just how little I removed with the drill. There's still a bunch of metal that stuck through the holes in the cover. Keep them they're good for alignment later.

  6. drill a smaller hole through the center of the hole you started, using the appropriate size bit for the machine screw you've chosen.

    I used a 3mm machine screw long enough to get all the way through the petcock, that way if I screwed up the tapping I could just put a nut on the backside.

    Then tap the hole

  7. clean all that crap out of the petcock.

  8. put the new gasket in place, it should look like this: You can get one from any of the places listed here. Search for part number 16955–268–020.

  9. put it all back together. this is the way the lever should go:

  10. Then notice that the new screws get in the way of the petcock lever.

    Doh!

  11. mark with a knife on the lever how much you'll need to remove, and take the whole thing apart again, then file enough off the lever so it will clear the screw.
  12. then it looks like this when put back together:

Note that this is how I did it, if you don't have a tap and die set, you probably should just drill right through and put a nut on the back.