Back In the Saddle (With A Caveat)

[Guest]

Got my bike back on the road and I've been riding for the last week.

I went on an extended (for me) ride up to the Harley Davidson museum in Milwaukee. Got suckered into that one. What a boring ride.

The bike ran fine for the most part, but there was one point when it seemed to lose power at about 60 mph in fifth gear. Dropped it into fourth and that didn't help. Dropped it into third and the revs picked back up and I was able to get back up to highway speed. Fourth and fifth seemed to be fine again.

Gonna go through the wiring harness and check all the connections. The carbs have been thoroughly dipped, cleaned and rebuilt by one of our esteemed members.

The problem seems to be intermittent, which is why I suspect an electrical issue.

[salty_monk]

Electrical or make sure the tank is breathing properly.... (breathes through the gas cap).

Sounds like it was losing spark to me though. Check all the connections on the looms, volts at the coil, plug wires aren't cracked & leaking spark to earth. Are you still on points? If so it could be a condensor fault.....

Could also be a bit of junk from your tank got into your newly rebuilt carbs...

[MadCapsule]

Electrical or make sure the tank is breathing properly.... (breathes through the gas cap).

Sounds like it was losing spark to me though. Check all the connections on the looms, volts at the coil, plug wires aren't cracked & leaking spark to earth. Are you still on points? If so it could be a condensor fault.....

Could also be a bit of junk from your tank got into your newly rebuilt carbs...

I'll have a look through all that as well. As far as I know, the plug wires have never been replaced, but I know virtually nothing about this bike's service history prior to my ownership.

Yes, I'm still running points, so I'll take a look at the condenser as well.

How would I verify if the gas cap is breathing properly?

[salty_monk]

You can remove the cap when it happens. If air wooshes in and it then runs fine then that's your issue.

Take it apart and clean it... Won't hurt and it's an easy job.

Run it in the dark with tank on and off if poss and wiggle the plug wires and coil wires around. If they are "leaking" you'll see the spark. On my 1000G it was jumping from the cracked wires to the fins on the head.

[MadCapsule]

Quick update.

After having another one of the "episodes" described above, I sat down and really analyzed how the bike was reacting while it was happening.

This last time it felt like it was losing power I pulled in the clutch and let go of the throttle. I noticed that the motor settled back into its idle speed, but the bike itself felt like it was slowing itself down, not just smoothly coasting to a stop. It was diving forward as if the brakes were being applied, even though I wasn't engaging either one of the brakes.

So, I got it home and put it up on the center stand and jacked up the front end. I spun the front wheel and it was perfectly smooth, no resistance. Then I lowered the front end and tried to spin the rear wheel. Tons of resistance. It was starting to get dark and i don't have a garage, so it was going to have to wait.

The next opportunity I had, I started going through the procedure of removing the rear wheel. My brother had suggested that the axle nut may have been torqued down too tightly. Sure enough, the wheel spun freely after I loosened up the axle nut.

I decided to take the wheel all the way off anyway. I'd never done that before and to make sure the wheel bearings were still OK (I had already ordered a set of replacements, front and rear).

I put everything back together and made sure that the axle nut was not torqued down quite so tightly and everything seems to be fine.

My guess is that the over-torqued axle nut was causing excessive friction and heat to build up somewhere in the rear wheel at higher speeds, because I never came across that situation while just puttering around in the city.

I took the bike out on the highway yesterday and didn't have a single problem at sustained 70 mph speeds.