Post by dungbug on Jan 14, 2012 18:38:36 GMT
Ah I see.
Well fitted the new plug, cap and a new piece of HT lead. She fired up so went out for a test run, pulled out of the estate onto the main road and she started playing up as before. After (another) walk home I thought I'd check the basics, what was odd is she'd cut out and wouldn't start until she was left for 5 minutes or so, then would fire up again.
I decided to check the connections on the coil, CDI and any wiring inbetween. I don't have a spare coil or CDI so couldn't swap them out to test. All the connections seemed good, couple were grimey but no corrosion anywhere, I managed to get her fired up by giving full choke (normally this would paralise this bike as she doesn't like hardly any choke). The throttle response was hit and miss and she eventually died again.....I was now thinking that it could be fuel related so back to basics, spark, fuel & compression. The old spark plug looked to be in good nick, no oil foul, burnt electrode, the ceramic was all good so that made me think what's going on inside the engine must be reasonably good (she doesn't use/lose any oil). There was plenty of spark, it looked more yellow but it was bright sunshine. There was alot of spark and it was consistant, no break in the sparking. After various further attempts I pulled the plug out again & it was bone dry, 'this should be soaked if the fuels getting through and not being ignited' I thought. I suspected the carb, possible the float jammed or something blocked somewhere so pulled the carb off. Took off the float bowl and there was some cack in the bottom which was strange as I cleaned this a few weeks ago when the diaphragm was fitted (?). I checked the seating of the diaphragm (just to double check I'd done it right and all was good, I sprayed a generous amount of carb cleaner around the internals which seem to flush out a little more gunk. Refitted the carb and still nothing, I was running out of ideas by this point and was dreading the possibility of low compression being the cause. I glanced down at the fuel tap, pulled the fuel line off and no fuel came out (?). I removed the tank (which hadn't been bolted back down) and pulled the fuel tap off. The gauze was smothered is crud, this was cleaned, I took the bottom of the tap off (the bowl like piece) and it was full of dirt. Cleaned all this up, refitted everything and she fired into life. Took her for a short run and there was no hint of power loss, hunting or stalling. Does suggest fuel starvation was the problem, maybe it was just bad timing that the cap fell apart which made me think it was an electrical problem.I'll take her out for a run tomorrow to be sure, but after 200 yards she'd give up before. I did just over a mile on the run (if it broke down again I didn't want to be pushing it home further than I needed to), all seemed good so I'll do a bit more distance tomorrow and see if she behaves.
Does a blockage in the fuel tap sound feasible? That's all it could have been as far as I can tell, on the plus side I now have a new HT lead, plug & cap and know for sure that all the connections on the ignition system are good.
so I thought I'd leave a good test run until tomorrow.