First off let me point you to a site that has excellent documentation and photos of the Jet Kit install. After viewing this site, I decided to link it and just add any insights I may have from my jet kit installs on Kathy's and my bike. Many thanks go to Helfyr for taking the time to document the process so well.

HELFYR's Motorcycle Web Page

Major Oops

    Here is a major oops I ran into, and you may also. Removing/Installing the needle retainers inside the slides may break the little fingers that grasp the "O" ring on the retainer. If you do break it, you will have to buy a new slide(s), and your bike will be down. I am still waiting on the second slide, and it is going on three weeks. This happened to Wes and I on re-installing the retainers on my bike. It seems that on the LC's, that are a couple years old, these "O" Rings dry out. Just for reference, my LC is a 1999, and had close to 16,000 miles on it at the time of the install.

    To prevent this from happening to you, spray the inside of the slides with WD40 before removing the needle retainers. Use lot's of it, so you can be sure that the "O" Rings get lubricated. Then before inserting the needle retainers after assembling the new needles, coat the "O" Rings with Vaseline.

Work Around

     As a work around, should you break one or more of the four fingers in the slide, you can still proceed with the install. Just follow the directions on the needle assembly, remember the front and rear carburetors use different needles. You will be locking the needles in place with fuel proof epoxy or JB weld for fuel tanks, so get it right the first time. Remove the billows from the slide and insert the needles as instructed. Then insert the slide(s) with needles into the proper carburetor, guiding the needles into the metering hole. Having a helper at this point, is really helpful. Have the assistant reach into the carburetor and make sure the needle is seated in the metering hole, and the slide is held up so that the needle is also bottomed out in the slide. 

    We used Super Glue to tack the needle in place. Then followed up with JB Weld for fuel tank repair. But, if you can get fuel proof epoxy, this may be a better choice. I think that one of my needles may have came loose, do to a decrease of fuel mileage from 31-33 to 28 per gallon. Interesting is the fact that machine still runs great in all ranges. Since the whole operation is trapped inside the slide, no debris can enter into the engine. I will diagnose the problem once my slide arrives. By the way the price on the slide is $31.95 USD, plus all the little crap needed.

   Follow up: Nether needle had came loose. The JB weld has held for over a month. The new slides fit correctly, but see below for parts that did not fit.

Warning!

     Note: I did receive the incorrect "O" rings from Suzuki. Warning: these incorrect "O" rings will break your slides! They are to big on the outside diameter. Look at the pictures to the left carefully and you will see the difference. I caught it before hand, so no damage done. 

  New Slide Arrived

     The slide has arrived and I have done the repairs. The needles were still in place and nothing had came loose. The only thing I can guess is either I am getting some bad gas, or the brass needle seats in the Carburetor them self's are damaged from our make shift repair. The picture I took of the needle seats did not show the brass seat inserts very well. But, I thought that I saw a little deformation, which I can only verify by riding and checking the mileage. 

Ride Test

     Ride test is done, and here are the results. The 165 main jets that work so well on the 2001 LC's is a little lean on the 1999 model. I switched back to the 170 main jets recommend by Thunder. Ah, much better, allows machine to continue to pull all the way up to the rev limiter. The bike has a little more idle flutter than Kathy's with the same jet kit and needles settings. Probably the needle seat thing I referred to above. I moved the needle clips up one notch on both the front and rear. Which lowers the needles, and that seemed to give the same amount of flutter as Kathy's 2001 LC. The mileage is now back up to 32 MPH. Performance in all the ranges is good. I did loose a little throttle response do to lowering the needles one notch. But, still faster response than the stock form.

FYI

     I would suggest that the bowl screws be replaced with stainless Allen head screws. You will find that the screws try to round off when removing. I believe this is because of the dissimilar metals (Steel Screw into cast aluminum. The pictures to the left explain it all.

TiP

     You may want to silicone the rubber trim pieces in to make assembly easier for future Air Cleaner cleaning session. This will also help when you remove the tank shell's for spark plug replacing. At this time I plan on a 8,000 mile interval on cleaning the K&N filters and replacing the spark plugs at the same time. Depending on your riding conditions, this may be to long an interval.