Involuntary Mechanical Education

Yesterday was an eventful one as my pig was determined to take the day off. It started like any other morning work day. I got started on my trek to work. It was a little cooler than normal and about the second stop light from the house I thought "Something is not right". I could not tell you exactly what but I thought I heard a faint noise or maybe it just sounded a little different. It felt right and accelerated great so I continued on and ignored my paranoia. I was riding like the wind accelerating past the cars only to be tagged at the next stop light. I began my braking routine. I was slowing to about 15MPH when I noticed my pig was no longer running. STALLED!

I tried over the next 20 seconds to get it started again with no success and the light was now green again. I had about 6 cars behind me so I made a snap decision to get out of the highway asap. I hopped off and quickly tried to push through the two lanes of traffic. A quick brake to stop me from being driven over by a passing car and then I was across.

I tried over the next 10 minutes to get my KLR started but no matter what I tried...nothing just quiet cranking that was quickly getting slower as my battery was drained. "Check, I need to get a better battery sooner than later".

I was stuck. I called my wife and about 10 minutes later she showed. One more attempt to crank my KLR over confirmed that it was staying put.

We drove to the local Bike shop and were told they could not help retrieving it and that it was going to be two days before they could even look at it. "I need a truck" I thought. Being without a truck and no help from the repair shop I decided; I would get it started. All I need is some starting fluid, some basic tools and some jumper cables.

After getting all these items we drove back to the pig and I began taking off the seat and plastics. The battery from the powered off car (bad idea to have the car turned on as they would fry my KLR electrical system) was jumped to my KLR battery and we started to crank.

"Why cant my battery crank that well? I definitely need a better battery." I thought. We sprayed a little started fluid in the air box. Still just empty cranking with and without the choke. I emptied the carburetor bowl of gas and checked that the gas tank was pumping gas during cranking. All good. Still nothing during cranking but I decided to hold the throttle as if it was flooded and it started to respond. Held a little more throttle and it turned over sputtering to life.

I knew there was a possibility that it may stall again and my reading of the manual earlier in the day indicated how easy it was to adjust the idle. Some quick finger turns and it idles faster but It still wanted to stall. Some more adjustments and it now stayed running but idled at nearly 2500-3000 RPM's. Threw the seat back, got my gear on and rode my idle revving bike home.

Once I got home I slowly reduced the idle back down to the normal 1200-1500 range and it stayed. No stalling. I spend the next hour making adjustments to the throttle tube and idle as well as adjusting the choke. Started up every time I tried to turn it over. /Shrug

It looks ok now. Guess I now need to decide if I am going to tear down the carb myself with the help of my step father or pay to have it adjusted properly by the bike shop. I am leaning toward spending my Saturday breaking down, cleaning, checking and adjusting my carb\fuel system.

At least that way I can learn enough to work on it if later repairs are needed.

Mechanical education. Here we come.