.png "Powered by vBulletin")
Newbie here! I've been wrestling with my 850 for just a few weeks now. I've had some strange issues—as of now, it won't idle at all.
I bought it a couple of years ago and stored it at a friend's house a few hours away because I had planned to move to his city. Long story short, though my friend rode and started it a few times it basically sat for two years. He ended up flooding it pretty badly at one point because he didn't know how to operate the petcock
I have no idea how long it sat like that, and when drained there was definitely more fuel than oil (more on that in a second). Flushed it with oil and heat-cycled it a few times with new plugs when I found out.
It's pretty heavily modified with a scrambler treatment. Pods (with extenders?) and custom 4-1 exhaust, rejetted with 135 mains to work. Insanely enough, there's a whole YouTube series on the build here. It's pretty slick, and was running decently... at the time.
After moving last summer, I'm finally getting the thing out. Initially, it fired up pretty easily with the choke and just had a slightly rough idle. Amazingly, this was without the air filters—don't ask me why I ran it without them, some of the boots are trashed and I was antsy. I figured it just needed a good carb clean, and took it for a couple of rides to get a feel for the bike. On the second ride, I was pulling out onto an incline and the bike just quit out of nowhere. No power. I figured it was probably either the battery or the charging circuit, so I got a new battery and checked the resistance on the stator. Resistances read back as good but, strangely, the bike showed no sign of working with a new battery. The old one was also nearly completely dead. After messing with it a bit, I realized the ignition would work but the (aftermarket) gauge cluster and headlight wouldn't. After starting it a few times everything decided to work again, but it ran noticeably worse.
So I limp it back to my friend's garage and write off the electricals as a fluke (maybe a short?). I give the carbs a decent carb-spray clean, make sure the air screws are 3 turns out (just a feeling based on how lean it seemed), and throw them back on. Won't start. With the choke all the way out and some throttle it'll come to life, but it dies immediately without it.
After coming back a couple of days later and trying to do the same thing, it won't even turn over with throttle. Just cranks and then backfires. On top of that, my new sparkplugs are fouled and I found one with a bit of oil on the threads.
Now I'm no mechanic, but I'm going back through everything I can think of and doing things the right way. On my to-do list:
Am I missing anything? Those things seem like the most obvious starting points, but I definitely welcome extra ideas.
And if you really read all that, I owe you a beer lol. Thanks!
I bought it a couple of years ago and stored it at a friend's house a few hours away because I had planned to move to his city. Long story short, though my friend rode and started it a few times it basically sat for two years. He ended up flooding it pretty badly at one point because he didn't know how to operate the petcock
I have no idea how long it sat like that, and when drained there was definitely more fuel than oil (more on that in a second). Flushed it with oil and heat-cycled it a few times with new plugs when I found out.It's pretty heavily modified with a scrambler treatment. Pods (with extenders?) and custom 4-1 exhaust, rejetted with 135 mains to work. Insanely enough, there's a whole YouTube series on the build here. It's pretty slick, and was running decently... at the time.
After moving last summer, I'm finally getting the thing out. Initially, it fired up pretty easily with the choke and just had a slightly rough idle. Amazingly, this was without the air filters—don't ask me why I ran it without them, some of the boots are trashed and I was antsy. I figured it just needed a good carb clean, and took it for a couple of rides to get a feel for the bike. On the second ride, I was pulling out onto an incline and the bike just quit out of nowhere. No power. I figured it was probably either the battery or the charging circuit, so I got a new battery and checked the resistance on the stator. Resistances read back as good but, strangely, the bike showed no sign of working with a new battery. The old one was also nearly completely dead. After messing with it a bit, I realized the ignition would work but the (aftermarket) gauge cluster and headlight wouldn't. After starting it a few times everything decided to work again, but it ran noticeably worse.
So I limp it back to my friend's garage and write off the electricals as a fluke (maybe a short?). I give the carbs a decent carb-spray clean, make sure the air screws are 3 turns out (just a feeling based on how lean it seemed), and throw them back on. Won't start. With the choke all the way out and some throttle it'll come to life, but it dies immediately without it.
After coming back a couple of days later and trying to do the same thing, it won't even turn over with throttle. Just cranks and then backfires. On top of that, my new sparkplugs are fouled and I found one with a bit of oil on the threads.
Now I'm no mechanic, but I'm going back through everything I can think of and doing things the right way. On my to-do list:
- Full carb teardown/rebuild/sync
- Cleaning the gas tank/petcock (petcock vacuum works)
- Replacing boots on the air filters (a couple are pretty torn up)
- Replacing plugs (again) and verifying ignition coils
- Valves—PO did some adjustments to the top end, and replaced all the gaskets. He did adjust the clearances right to the bottom of the clearance range though, so I'm thinking that's probably a good thing to check.
- Valve seals—this one seems like a real headache, but between the plugs fouling up so quickly, finding oil on one of them, and the absolutely insane way the engine flooded, I think it might be necessary.
Am I missing anything? Those things seem like the most obvious starting points, but I definitely welcome extra ideas.
And if you really read all that, I owe you a beer lol. Thanks!
Tore into it as much as I could with them still ganged together.
Comment