Intermittent Stalling

[Vidrazor]

I haven't had a chance to do the fault finding flowchart trace yet. I downloaded and printed out the fault finding flowchart doc, and I just got my '400's service manual today. I hope to hook up a with a friend of mine who's more knowledgeable on these types of things. Don't want to go this alone.

I also need to charge the battery to go through the flowchart. Not sure how I'm gonna do that yet, short of buying a charger. Unfortunately it seems like you have to remove the tank to remove the battery (bad design concept), and I defintely don't want to do that on my own until I've gone through it once with someone that has some experience in these things.

I haven't seen any funky activity with the tach, although I do notice if I rev the engine up pretty quickly to ~9k, the headlight gets brighter. Don't know if this is normal or not, as it seems normal at 6k or under as per todius' quick check suggestions above.

If I definitively nail this, I'll post it. This way, it may help someone else experiencing the same thing.

[stormi]

Unfortunately it seems like you have to remove the tank to remove the battery (bad design concept),

You don't have to remove it, just lift the tank a tiny bit to get the plate out.  If you undo the two bolts attached to the tank, then the other two that are on that metal plate ( at the sides), you can actually squeak the plate out without having to remove the tank.   I did it with a full tank of gas, and by myself.  After that of course, it's just undoing the cables from the battery posts and lifting straight out.

Hope this helps.

stormi

[briholt]

Any luck with your bike?  I've been off the forum for several months now...my bike was running great; I was getting 50 mpg on long trips...mid 40's in traffic.  Then, one day in late august, 'bout 80 degrees in seattle, my engine stalls about 3 minutes after starting it.  I was in traffic for a very short while, came to a stop for a minute or 2, and then started to accelerate when it died.  It started right up 10 minutes later.

Since then, I haven't had much time to figure it out.  It starts right up and runs great.  Fabulous.  I choke it some, keeping it between 2K and 4K rpms, and it goes nicely for about 5 minutes, and then dies.  Can't start it for another 10 minutes.  For what it's worth I changed the spark plugs, and they made no difference.

My engine does have a termostat that is runs 10 or 15 degrees hotter than stock.  I was thinking that the stalling was all related to heat, but my bike was running great earlier this summer under much hotter conditions.

I'll be checking my volt output as suggested, and in the meantime, I'm just curious to hear how Vidrazor's coming along...

Bri

If it means anything, when I first start the bike, it'll run fine, but if I don't take off in a few minutes, it will stall and act similarly, although not as bad. Once I'm running it pretty much stabilizes. Once I'm on the road I don't have any problems with the bike.

Thanks for any help with this.

[PitterB4]

Bri - I think it ended up being dirty carbs.  See this.  

BTW - I had similar symptoms and mine was a bad connection to the right coil.  I just crimped and greased the female and of the connectors (not nearly as fun as it sounds!   ) and was good to go!