'03 K1200RS removing charcoal canister

I'm looking to remove the charcoal canister from my 03 K12RS. Does anybody have instructions on how to remove it?

Val
03 K12RS

I did remove mine......reluctantly. I added a set of electronic Ohlin shocks and the remote reservoir needed to go where the canister lives, so I ditched the canister. I don't recall the process, or the line routing, as it was all a part of the shock installation, but I could go back and look at what I did if you still want to know.

I do know that I smell gas fumes more often than I did when I had the canister in place.

BTW, still got that 74 Trident?

What do you expect to gain from removing the cannister? Is your existing cannister damaged? Note that if you remove the cannister you can expect to have more gasoline fumes present in the garage where you park the bike, and those not only smell bad but also pose some level of danger.

Best,
DG

GTRider said:

...and those not only smell bad but also pose some level of danger.

Click to expand...

Regarding the danger, gas smell, etc., it is instructive to note that only the US spec machines had the canisters for many years (maybe not so at this time). The Euro spec models ran along happily without them. Also, for many decades NO bikes had charcoal canisters. I have four motorcycles parked in my closed shop and only one of them still has the canister. One still has it; one never did; and two of them must have fallen off in the woods somewhere. I detect no gas fumes. Regarding danger, the level of fumes (even if you can smell gas) is well below the lower explosive limit.

Why remove it? Many reasons. Everything from aesthetics; to needing the space for mounting something else; to installing an auxiliary fuel tank; to having performance issues caused by over-rich fueling after sitting in the hot sun; to clogging from being over-filled with gas because of a fueling error or pump shut-off malfunction. Occasionally a clogged canister will cause the fuel tank to partially implode from fuel pump vacuum.

Fuel levels were dropped in the tanks in order to better assure that the canister does not get flooded. This is done by the length of the nipple extension into the fuel tank at the cap. Lots of people like to shorten (or remove) these to get the tank to hold more fuel. In those cases especially the canister is at risk of becoming fuel soaked and creating the problems outlined above. I recently bought a new Scag zero turn lawn mower and it has a charcoal canister. It also has plastic sleeves in the fill openings for both fuel tanks to prevent them from being filled as high as you could fill the older models. So, it was not just airspace for expansion - it was to protect the canister.