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Hi everyone, first post here. I've owned 2 other older bikes so far, and done a fair amount of work on both of them, going so far as to rebuild the top end on my cb360... in general I get mechanical stuff a lot better than electrical though. I'm guessing that will probably change by the time I'm done with this bike.
I picked up this bike because my dad was riding my maxim a lot, and I wanted something small and reliable to ride with him on and commute to work. I found a gs450 for sale for cheap that was really clean and ran great when I drove it around. I'd heard a few good things about the gs series, but not a whole lot about the electrical problems...
Within 2 days of having it on the road and driving it to work (35 miles each way) I took it out to lunch, shut it off, went to start it back up and it was dead. No lights anywhere, no cranking. I sat there for 10 minutes and ate lunch, and tried it one last time... and it worked! Started right up after work... made it halfway home just fine, stopped to get gas. Went to start it back up and same thing... this time very very faint lights on the dash, but not enough juice to crank. Rolled it down a hill, popped it, and BANG! Huge backfires but it wouldn't stay running. Tried to jump it with a car and it started, but ever since that it's misfired and popped pretty bad from about 5,000 rpm on up (if you can eventually get it to the redline), and when unhooked from the jumpers it died after a minute. Ended up picking it up with a truck.
This is about when I heard about the charging problems that happen with these bikes. Not really sure where to begin, I got a new battery as the one in it was old... tested with a multimeter and it read about 13.5v when revved a little I believe. I figured it must be charging. The bike started up fine at this point, and kept running, but still misfires badly at higher rpms. I took the tank off, cleaned it out as best I could (it really didn't look too bad), cleaned the petcock, put in an inline filter and put some fresh gas and seafoam to try and make sure the whole fuel system was as clean as possible (yes I know a full carb rebuild would be best, and I'll probably do that eventually, but it was running great when I got it and I'm pretty sure dirty carbs isn't causing the problem at this point). I also went through and checked all the connections I could, cleaned all the grounds etc.
So it was running (albeit poorly), so I decided to ride it around the block and see if maybe it just needed the cobwebs cleaned out of it. After a couple of minutes I got to a stop sign and the bike died again. Once again not even a hint of a light... Coasted it down a hill and popped it, didn't even try to fire. At the bottom of the hill I pulled over, took the side panels off it and began to look around. At this point I suddenly started to have a little juice again, but not enough to crank. I did notice a buzzing noize when I turned the kill switch to "on"... so I followed it and found it's source, and some glowing sparks!!! coming from the ignitor box. Not good. I shut it off and pushed it home. The next morning? It started right up.
I don't really know what to think at this point. Is this what an bad ignitor sounds like? Certainly sparking isn't good... but I've checked all the wires around it and couldn't find any shorting... and I'm not sure where the glowing embers could come from the box itself. And as I said, the next day it started up fine, with no sparks (although it still misfires...)
I don't have a manual yet but I guess I'll be ordering one. In the meantime, is there a way to test my ignitor? Could my charging system still be suspect? Are the misfiring and the battery that likes to "play dead" two separate issues, even though they started at the same time? Sorry for the long post, this thing just has me confounded at the moment... and I was trying to buy a bike I wouldn't constantly be tinkering with. Is there even such a thing?
I picked up this bike because my dad was riding my maxim a lot, and I wanted something small and reliable to ride with him on and commute to work. I found a gs450 for sale for cheap that was really clean and ran great when I drove it around. I'd heard a few good things about the gs series, but not a whole lot about the electrical problems...
Within 2 days of having it on the road and driving it to work (35 miles each way) I took it out to lunch, shut it off, went to start it back up and it was dead. No lights anywhere, no cranking. I sat there for 10 minutes and ate lunch, and tried it one last time... and it worked! Started right up after work... made it halfway home just fine, stopped to get gas. Went to start it back up and same thing... this time very very faint lights on the dash, but not enough juice to crank. Rolled it down a hill, popped it, and BANG! Huge backfires but it wouldn't stay running. Tried to jump it with a car and it started, but ever since that it's misfired and popped pretty bad from about 5,000 rpm on up (if you can eventually get it to the redline), and when unhooked from the jumpers it died after a minute. Ended up picking it up with a truck.
This is about when I heard about the charging problems that happen with these bikes. Not really sure where to begin, I got a new battery as the one in it was old... tested with a multimeter and it read about 13.5v when revved a little I believe. I figured it must be charging. The bike started up fine at this point, and kept running, but still misfires badly at higher rpms. I took the tank off, cleaned it out as best I could (it really didn't look too bad), cleaned the petcock, put in an inline filter and put some fresh gas and seafoam to try and make sure the whole fuel system was as clean as possible (yes I know a full carb rebuild would be best, and I'll probably do that eventually, but it was running great when I got it and I'm pretty sure dirty carbs isn't causing the problem at this point). I also went through and checked all the connections I could, cleaned all the grounds etc.
So it was running (albeit poorly), so I decided to ride it around the block and see if maybe it just needed the cobwebs cleaned out of it. After a couple of minutes I got to a stop sign and the bike died again. Once again not even a hint of a light... Coasted it down a hill and popped it, didn't even try to fire. At the bottom of the hill I pulled over, took the side panels off it and began to look around. At this point I suddenly started to have a little juice again, but not enough to crank. I did notice a buzzing noize when I turned the kill switch to "on"... so I followed it and found it's source, and some glowing sparks!!! coming from the ignitor box. Not good. I shut it off and pushed it home. The next morning? It started right up.
I don't really know what to think at this point. Is this what an bad ignitor sounds like? Certainly sparking isn't good... but I've checked all the wires around it and couldn't find any shorting... and I'm not sure where the glowing embers could come from the box itself. And as I said, the next day it started up fine, with no sparks (although it still misfires...)
I don't have a manual yet but I guess I'll be ordering one. In the meantime, is there a way to test my ignitor? Could my charging system still be suspect? Are the misfiring and the battery that likes to "play dead" two separate issues, even though they started at the same time? Sorry for the long post, this thing just has me confounded at the moment... and I was trying to buy a bike I wouldn't constantly be tinkering with. Is there even such a thing?
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