[ShadeTree]

Bike\'s dead on the highway. Help!

Hey folks,

Ok, here's the saga. I was riding the EX home today and it died on me. I'm not sure why. I noticed that it started losing power, and tried to give it a little more gas a test. No response. I reached down and tried flipping the reserve. I'm pretty sure that I had to move it from "on" to "reserve". No response, and now I'm slowing down. I try to give it a touch more gas again and still no response. Seconds later, ,the bike died.

I coasted the bike to the side of the highway and checked around. The petcock was set to the on position. I tried starting it again with no luck. A lot of cranking and no action. I put the choke all the way on and tried again. It started! For all of 2 seconds, the cranking caught and the revs went over 2k. Then it died again.

I rocked the bike back and forth a bit, and there's some gas in there; not a lot, and I knew I'd have to fill up pretty soon, but there's still a little in there.

So... I'm going to try driving down there early in the morning before traffic picks up (2 or 3 in the morning) and try filling the tank to see if it helps. Any other suggestions?

 

[longrider]

Re: Bike\'s dead on the highway. Help!

The symptoms are perfect for being out of gas. It is possible the reserve pickup on your petcock is plugged in which case once it gets below the main tank level it 'runs out' I would be willing to bet more gas will solve your problem

 

[Guest]

Re: Bike\'s dead on the highway. Help!

Maybe you need to clean your fuel system out. All the way from the tank to the cylinder intake.

 

[ShadeTree]

Re: Bike\'s dead on the highway. Help!

You think so? I'm hoping. It's on a major highway so I'm going to have to go back in the wee hours. If I can get it started, I'll just motor it to a restaurant on the side and then pick it up a few hours later.

 

[PorradaVFR]

Re: Bike\'s dead on the highway. Help!

A very similar thing happened to me on my EX way back when. When you switch to reserve (or FROM reserve to ON) it is by no means an instant switchover if you're quite low or on fumes. If you get some air in there, you can quite likely run down the reserve, even if gas is in the tank.

In my case, I ran down the battery trying to crank over an engine that was getting no gas. :blush:

I don't think there is an actual problem mechanically. Let us know if it turned right over when you got back.

Good luck.

 

[ShadeTree]

Re: Bike\'s dead on the highway. Help!

Hey all,

Well, here's the latest update. I got out there for about 4:15 this morning and put about 2 gallons of gas into the tank. I then tried starting her up a few times with full choke. The very first time it sounded like the bike would start, but nothing happened. I tried opening the gas cap but that didn't help either. As a last ditch effort I ripped the bike apart enough to take a look at the air filter. I had the notion that it might have exploded (again) and let some crap into the carbs. Alas, the filter was (fortunately) ok. So I put the bike back together again.

I tried to start it and it really sounded like it was trying this time. I actually got two or three putt-putts before it died. Tried again and the same thing. Waited and tried again, same thing. By this time I was a little excited, and a little frustrated that I had to take the bike apart on the highway for apparently nothing. The bike is a Cali spec, and has two hoses that come out of the front of the gas tank and attach to nozzles to the right of the instrument cluster. Thinking that I may have gotten those reversed, I swapped them. The bike started right up.

I let her idle for a minute to be sure it wouldn't die, then went to the car and got my gear. When I got back to the bike I reved it half way a couple of times to see the response, and when that went ok, I suited up. I rode around for about 8 miles, mixing highway and road travel. I did some high rev driving to see how the bike handled it, and to burn more gas to see if the bike would die again. The only problem I had was a tight, low speed, slightly inclined turn when the back tire stepped out a bit (combination slick roads from slight rain and tire getting to the point of replacement).

Satisfied, I rode it to a diner just off the highway from where the car was, and left it there. Now I'm off to pick it up again, while the wife uses the cage to get to work.

Thanks for the help folks. I'll keep you updated on what (if anything) happens.

Ayer