Hello All,
I've been having an ongoing issue with my 1982 xs400 heritage special. Sometimes when riding, the rpms will start stuttering - like going from 5500, dropping suddenly to 4500, then back up to 5000, then up to 5500, ect. It does this without any movement on the throttle (and freaked out the girlfriend the one time she was on the back while it did this). Eventually, the bike will just start losing power, slowing down (even with full throttle) and will stall. I stop, turn of the bike, then go to restart and it won't restart until I let it sit for a few minutes - and even then it takes some luck.
The bike used to do this more often, but I figured out that if I let it warm up for a good 5 minutes before riding, it would almost never do it. It seems that it is mostly doing it on rides that are longer than 50km (it's only done it on a short ride once, but I think that may have been due to a lack of warming up).
On saturday I was riding on my way to visit my mother, and it started to stutter again and died. This time, when I went to start it again, the battery died. The battery wasn't that old, but I guess these things happen. I got a new battery into the bike and it started up no problem. After getting home I checked the charging system with my multi-meter - it read ~12.5-12.9 volts at idle, and 14.5 volts at 5k rpm - so the charging system is working. I figured that the battery was the issue of the whole thing, so was thankful it was fixed: I was wrong. On the ride back from my mothers house last night, after about 50 km, the bike started stuttering a little bit. My girlfriend wanted to stop anyway, so we took a rest. 10 minutes later we're back on the road and it's stuttering and stalls again. I had a lot of trouble getting it started up again and it stalled 4 more times on the rest of the ride home (about 40 km).
The only way I could keep it from stalling at lights was to keep the throttle up - if not it would just slow down to a stop.
If anyone has any idea what could be wrong with her, I would appreciate the help. I sprayed out the carbs with carb cleaner, but havn't taken them apart to clean them (if that might be the problem).
Thanks very much in advance, sorry about the essay length post!
I've been having an ongoing issue with my 1982 xs400 heritage special. Sometimes when riding, the rpms will start stuttering - like going from 5500, dropping suddenly to 4500, then back up to 5000, then up to 5500, ect. It does this without any movement on the throttle (and freaked out the girlfriend the one time she was on the back while it did this). Eventually, the bike will just start losing power, slowing down (even with full throttle) and will stall. I stop, turn of the bike, then go to restart and it won't restart until I let it sit for a few minutes - and even then it takes some luck.
The bike used to do this more often, but I figured out that if I let it warm up for a good 5 minutes before riding, it would almost never do it. It seems that it is mostly doing it on rides that are longer than 50km (it's only done it on a short ride once, but I think that may have been due to a lack of warming up).
On saturday I was riding on my way to visit my mother, and it started to stutter again and died. This time, when I went to start it again, the battery died. The battery wasn't that old, but I guess these things happen. I got a new battery into the bike and it started up no problem. After getting home I checked the charging system with my multi-meter - it read ~12.5-12.9 volts at idle, and 14.5 volts at 5k rpm - so the charging system is working. I figured that the battery was the issue of the whole thing, so was thankful it was fixed: I was wrong. On the ride back from my mothers house last night, after about 50 km, the bike started stuttering a little bit. My girlfriend wanted to stop anyway, so we took a rest. 10 minutes later we're back on the road and it's stuttering and stalls again. I had a lot of trouble getting it started up again and it stalled 4 more times on the rest of the ride home (about 40 km).
The only way I could keep it from stalling at lights was to keep the throttle up - if not it would just slow down to a stop.
If anyone has any idea what could be wrong with her, I would appreciate the help. I sprayed out the carbs with carb cleaner, but havn't taken them apart to clean them (if that might be the problem).
Thanks very much in advance, sorry about the essay length post!