Wont start any more???

[kickstart79]

Hello all,
I just bought my bike two weeks ago its a 79 gs550 L. It ran great when i brought it home for the guy i bought it off of. I road it around for a couple of days and then left it at my father in laws house. My father in law brought the bike back to y house which is 20 miles away and when we unloaded the bike from the truck the bike was only running on two cylinders. He had to leave to go to work at BIG moose Harley here in Maine. So he didn't have the time to look at it. So I tryed to figure out what was wrong with the thing. I checked the plugs and they looked fine. But when i Took the plugs from the cylinders that were not running and switched them to the other side of the engine that side would not run ether. So I figure that the two plugs are bad. I then put all the plugs back where the originally went and now I'm getting nothing from them.???????

I tryed doing a push start just to see if I could get it running that way and it would start but then die after 5 seconds.

Could it be junk in the petcock? or in the furl line? If i took the tank off of my bike with gas in it would it pour all over me?

Maybe the jets are clogged or something i don't know?

HELP any one!!!

[psyguy]

you need to start crossing things off the list of about 20 different things that could be wrong

item #1
take the sparkplugs out, put them in the caps, ground them to the engine and crank the engine - confirm whether you have spark on all cylinders (note the colour of the spark too)

[kickstart79]

Well I have checked the color of the plugs and they are black as night and a little wet? what does this mean?

[psyguy]

Well I have checked the color of the plugs and they are black as night and a little wet? what does this mean?

- that you kept cranking the engine for a while (wet)
- that the fuel mixture might be rich (for the operating condition when the engine was last running). this isnt your main problem though

[Pearson]

Well I have checked the color of the plugs and they are black as night and a little wet? what does this mean?

Fouling the plugs? That should be a rich condition in your carbs but why? Well what I would do is start digging around the forum and start crossing those things off your list like psyguy said. Right now, not really enough info. but clean up your plugs and get the carbon off 'em. Check for a good solid spark and then start thinking about doing some basic carb cleaning. The carbs on these old bikes aren't tough to work on at all. There are some excellent write ups on carb cleaning here on the forum.

[KiwiGS]

:?

you need to start crossing things off the list of about 20 different things that could be wrong

item #1
take the sparkplugs out, put them in the caps, ground them to the engine and crank the engine - confirm whether you have spark on all cylinders (note the colour of the spark too)

Do you have any spark? If you do is it Blue and fat or orange?

Is there fuel in the carb bowls?

Hows the battery?

Have you measured the voltage at the low voltage side of the coils?

Just few of the 20 or so things to check

Cheers

[kickstart79]

Hey guys, Thanks for all the advice. I bought some new plugs and put them in. After One kick MY bike started right up!!!!:-D I then road it around for 20min and if seems to be fine.

It is running a little rich. Bought i think i will try cleaning the carbs this weekend.

Thanks for all the help.

[kinch]

It is running a little rich. Bought i think i will try cleaning the carbs this weekend.

Hmmm, I'd say hold off unless necessary. You should be able to improve your mixture without doing that. Or at least give yourself some time on the bike before you attempt to remove and clean the carbs.

It is a relatively simple procedure but you could run into a snag that will cause you more trouble that you're prepared for and I assume you'd want to get acquainted with your new bike on the road rather than with your hands stuck up in it's guts right off the bat.