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Tuesday, August 2, 2011

90% of carb problems are electrical

I rode my XS for the first time in a couple months last Thursday to work. It was the first real ride since putting the '72 gas tank on. Me and Lucas took her on a quicky night test ride the night before and all seemed to check out.

I headed off on the 30 mile ride at 7 AM and got about halfway across the Bay Bridge before the bike began to sputter badly. I tried my best to make it to the other side of the bridge so I could pull over, but it was buckin hard and randomly. I would stop, pull over, and the bike would idle just fine. Once I got up to highway speed it would shutter.

I limped into work. It had to be the carb. The new tank I put on had some old gummed up gasoline that I cleaned out the best I could, but there were still some droplets and sediment going into the fuel filter. Some MUST have have got through and clogged one of the jets. Like a good parking lot warrior, I rebuilt the carbs at lunch. I blew out all the jets and wiped them down. The carbs actually looked pretty good inside. My coworker got a new camera and thought it would be amusing to document some of my frustration.

I slapped the carbs back on and... nuthin. I kicked probably 50 times. No spark. What the hell!? I changed plugs, fuses, and blew on it like an old Nintendo cartidge. No dice. I went back upstairs to put some deoderant on and to think.

The tank.

It has to be the tank.

Maybe it was shorting out some wiring? I went back outside and looked at all the wiring and there it was. I missed it the first time. One of the connectors to the coils was disconnected. Just barely. The tank must have snagged the wire and pulled it out just enough to not make good contact on the way to work. And taking the tank off to work on the carbs must have completely disconnected it. 2 hours to find a 5 second fix.







1 comment:

gnarlycharlie4u said...

lol I can't tell you how many times I've told someone 90% of carb issues are electrical.

Ironically I spent a couple weeks chasing electrical gremlins on my GL1000 to no avail. So I broke down and cleaned and sync'd the carbs, stripped and flushed the tank and I'll be reassembling shortly.

After all that I realized it might be a problem with a wire or two having too much resistance as it gets warm.
Hopefully not, but we shall see.