SteveD
Grey Hound
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2011
- Messages
- 5,826
- Reaction score
- 41
- Location
- It’s complicated....
- Bike
- BMW G650 X-challenge
My beautiful XC is starting to frustrate me just a tad.
On Saturday myself and a mate (first lesson learnt - don't ride solo when you are a kak mechanic) head off into the Karoo. The bike is feeling great, the roads are incredible, it is absolutely freezing all the way from Cape Town to Sutherland, with snow in places.
Soon after leaving Sutherland I notice the bike is "surging" every now and then. I noticed this at about 100km/h, cruising along in 5th. Wierd... When I get to the next turn, I tap off and the bike cuts out. When I start it again, it won't idle, and I have to apply throttle just to keep the engine alive. We are quite close to our destination, we we carry on and arrive OK, but the surging is getting progressively worse.
We checked:
- air filter OK, not blocked
- fuel lines OK, can't find any blockages
- removed airbox, checked butterfly vale (?) not sure whether that is the right term, the circular gizmo in the intake just below the airbox. That was not loose, and rotated correctly when we twisted the throttle
- reset ECU, by leaving the bike off for a while, and by pulling the fuses, and by removing the battery.
- sparkplug leads were not loose, plugs were not loose. I didn't have a sparkplug spanner with me, which was stupid and irritating, so I couldn't check them
All looked OK, so we put everything back together and voila! The bike idles fine. BUT when if try to pull off, it just dies.
We messed around a bit more trying to find the fault, but no success.
The symptoms:
- Sometimes the bike idles OK, but will then die as soon as I turn the throttle
- Sometimes the bike starts fine, but idles really rough. It sounds as if somebody is twisting the throttle every few seconds
- If it is idling rough, then it doesn't cut out of I rev it, but will cut out when it goes back to idle
- If I keep the revs high, the bike will run, but it surges horribly. It feels as if somebody is stepping on the brake every two or three seconds
So I am now on an enforced holiday on a Karoo farm while I make a plan to trailer the bike back to Cape Town. I could maybe have nursed it back, but 800km on a bike running that badly sounded like a kak idea.
Any ideas on what could be wrong?
On Saturday myself and a mate (first lesson learnt - don't ride solo when you are a kak mechanic) head off into the Karoo. The bike is feeling great, the roads are incredible, it is absolutely freezing all the way from Cape Town to Sutherland, with snow in places.
Soon after leaving Sutherland I notice the bike is "surging" every now and then. I noticed this at about 100km/h, cruising along in 5th. Wierd... When I get to the next turn, I tap off and the bike cuts out. When I start it again, it won't idle, and I have to apply throttle just to keep the engine alive. We are quite close to our destination, we we carry on and arrive OK, but the surging is getting progressively worse.
We checked:
- air filter OK, not blocked
- fuel lines OK, can't find any blockages
- removed airbox, checked butterfly vale (?) not sure whether that is the right term, the circular gizmo in the intake just below the airbox. That was not loose, and rotated correctly when we twisted the throttle
- reset ECU, by leaving the bike off for a while, and by pulling the fuses, and by removing the battery.
- sparkplug leads were not loose, plugs were not loose. I didn't have a sparkplug spanner with me, which was stupid and irritating, so I couldn't check them
All looked OK, so we put everything back together and voila! The bike idles fine. BUT when if try to pull off, it just dies.
We messed around a bit more trying to find the fault, but no success.
The symptoms:
- Sometimes the bike idles OK, but will then die as soon as I turn the throttle
- Sometimes the bike starts fine, but idles really rough. It sounds as if somebody is twisting the throttle every few seconds
- If it is idling rough, then it doesn't cut out of I rev it, but will cut out when it goes back to idle
- If I keep the revs high, the bike will run, but it surges horribly. It feels as if somebody is stepping on the brake every two or three seconds
So I am now on an enforced holiday on a Karoo farm while I make a plan to trailer the bike back to Cape Town. I could maybe have nursed it back, but 800km on a bike running that badly sounded like a kak idea.
Any ideas on what could be wrong?
