Just got GS, question #1.

[Anonymous]

Hey guys/gals! I just bought my first GS, a 1981 GS650E to be exact. I bought it with 1,900 miles on it for 1700 dollars(U.S.). The bike is immaculate and runs really well except for today. I've only had it for two days and have encountered a small problem. As I was coming home today from school I could feel it lagging when I would accelerate, as I reached a stop it died. I started it and it started right up but it was still kinda under powered. I made it home fine, but when I had to go to work it wouldnt start. I pulled one of the spark plugs to see if it was fouled and it wasn't. I put the plug back in and tried to start it. It turned over a couple of times and came to life but wouldn't idle. I had to keep revving it to keep it running. I continued to work and it still had that underpowered feeling. Halfway to work it completley died on me and would not start back up. A nice person on the street saw me and picked me up a drove me to work. Anyway tonight after I got off of work I got a ride from a friend and went directly to the bike. I tried starting it but nothing. I then examined the fuel pitcock and there are three positions. If it was a clock the 9 o'clock position was RES (reserve i assume) the 6 o'clock position was ON (assuming for normal driving) and the 3 o'clock position was PRI(which the clymer manual revealed to me as Prime). The pitcock was on the ON position and so I turned it to RES. I cranked the bikeand it sputtered. I cranked it again and it started. It ran perfectly fine then, full power, idled fine was perfect as usual. This makes no sense to me whatsover. If someone could please help me just to tell me if they have had a problem like this or have heard of something like this I would really appreciate it. Anyway thanks for the future help I hope And I love my GS.

Thanks
Lance
Chico,CA
1981 GS650E

[SqDancerLynn1]

Sounds like you just ran out of gas, Normally the lever is pointed down to the On position, (Arrow up) Point the arrow forward is Reserve, point the arrow to the rear for prime. When you get down to less than a gallon of gas you will run out, By switching to res you can use that last gallon to get to a gas station

[Anonymous]

Hey wow fast reply. It has gas. I just filled it up.

[SqDancerLynn1]

Was the tank full when this happened??? If so the tank may have some rust in it cloging the in tank filter

[Anonymous]

I ran out of fuel in a similar fashion a while back but when I went to flick the petcock to res a friend must've done it while I wasn't looking as a joke ,lucky I was only about a km from a garage .Still isn't fun pushing a 230kg bike in the heat.

[Anonymous]

My 1100GLZ behaves just as you described when it gets close to needing to be switched to reserve. When it's at that point, I can only put in three gallons of gas. It's a four and a half gallon tank, so the reserve works out to being a gallon and a half. That seems like a big reserve, but it does agree with the gas guage, which is just between the red and the white.

But you said you had plenty of gas. I'm thinking that there may be a problem with your petcock. It could have been dirt or a malfunction, or maybe something was just stuck and loosened when you moved the lever. Since the bike hasn't been ridden much, it may need to be ridden some to get everything working right. I have this superstition that motorcycles really like to be ridden. They aren't meant to sit in the garage all the time.

[Hotblack]

With 1,900 miles I bet that bike has sat PLENTY. I'd advise taking the petcock apart and cleaning it out, it's fairly easy if the tank is mostly empty. At very least take it out of the tank and clean the screed off carefully. A little more adventurousness and you could take the screen out and lightly blow through in each of the positions and see if anything comes out besides gas. I'm not sure if giving it a full whack with an air hose while it's assembled would blow out your diaphragm or not, so I wouldn't try that. The carbs might be dirty, but are much more involved so it's probably easiest to leave 'em go unless you have a real need to open them.

I recently got my 750. I had poured what looked like 3/4 of a tank from the 550 into the 750s tank and took it out for a quick test run, it sputtered and died on the way back to my house, I pushed it the rest of the way to my driveway. It really didn't occur to me that I could be out of gas but I hit prime and then reserve and it started right up and I rode it to my garage. The 750 took most of the (tiny) 550Ls tank as reserve!

[Anonymous]

You might also want to check your gas cap. I had a similar problem with my GS 750 ES and it was the gas cap vent hole was pluged. With to hole pluged the gas tand creates a vacume and the fule cannot flow. I tried to clean it out to no avail so I purchased a new cap and it worked fine.