Will only run with choke on, can't touch throttle.

[Maniac]

Well, I got the bike started. It's been sitting for ~8 months, so it took a little work. In preparation I put in new plugs, a new air filter, and did a full oil change with 10w40 synthetic. The old oil was nasty and the PO apparently never changed the air filter or plugs. 

After draining the tank and removing the filter to clean it, I also drained the float bowls using the drain screws. Put in some fresh 89 octane and tossed a charger on the battery. A quick squirt of starting fluid and it was running, roughly, but running. I let it warm up and tried to turn off the choke, but it died. So I fiddled with it a bit, it'll run anywhere from 1/2 choke to full choke, but if you touch the throttle it dies.

I suspect I'll have to pull the carbs and clean them. Ugh. I hate carburetors. Another possibility, I suppose, is the wonky battery. It pretty much only holds a surface charge, if you charge it it will discharge after 20 minutes or so just sitting. I believe it has a dead cell. Could this be causing my problems? Or am I doomed to carburetor hell?

[c.will]

i just went through this with my bike. your carbs are probably gummed up with old gas residue. make sure you've got a can of good carb cleaner like chemtool not the dollar a can stuff and pay attention to all the small parts. a brass wire brush will help too. might as well check your float heights too (that part messed me up for a while too). replace the battery if you can too cause the coils fire straight from it iirc

take your time and do it right and it'll run fine. also you might reconsider the synthetic oil, its got additives that are great for a car but will make your clutch slip i'm told

[tt_four]

Tear them apart!

fresh gas is good but if the carbs are gunked up there's not much to do but clean them. Mine got the full treatment this weekend. I soaked them in pinesol for 24 hours, pulled them apart, cleaned the carb body with carb cleaner, cleaned all the plastic/rubber parts with wd40 and stuck it all back together. Do it a couple times and you won't even think anything about taking an hour to rebuild them in the future. If there's something to hate, it's fuel injection. It's nice to ride, but dealing with fuel maps and all the computer business is a nightmare!



you can also pull off the choke slide and pull out the plungers and clean those out if it's your choke giving you a hard time. It's the metal bar that the choke cable attaches too and slides back and forth.

Also, I know this sounds like an obvious question, but did you mess with your idle at all?? If it's too low the bike would just die when you took the choke off. I assume you're letting the bike fully warm up before you take the choke off, correct?

[Maniac]

Didn't mess with the idle at all, but I tried holding the throttle slightly open and it just stalled out. Since the idle adjustment screw just manipulates the stop on the throttle lever, should be the same thing. Besides, with the choke on it idled around 3500RPM once it warmed up.

I suspect I'll have to tear the carbs down. Thankfully there are just two! The last time I had to mess with carburetors was when I had my old GSF400F, which had 4 tiny little guys that I could never get to work right. Honestly, from that disassembled picture, these carbs just look like larger versions of those old 400 carbs. Guess it gives me a weekend project!

Kinda debating turning this into a track bike or getting it running and selling it to put money towards a new roof. Hm. Roof. Track Bike. Roof. Track Bike... 

I'm going through some difficulty with the FI on the GSXR, actually. I put an Akrapovic shorty from an '07 on it, and it's running a bit rich now. Lots of popping on deceleration. Trying to find someone to tune it is turning into a nightmare.

As for the synthetic, we'll see. I've been running it in my GSXR, which is also a wet-plate clutch, without any difficulty. If it was going to slip anywhere, I think it'd be on that instead of the GS.

[tt_four]

The clutch slipping isn't about synthetic/non-synthetic, it's caused by the oils with the molybednum(?? just taking a guess as to what it was called haha) additive meant for cars. As long as it doesn't have that additive you should be fine.

Switching to a shorty exhaust would most likely lean out your gsxr, but still I hate tuning FI. It took me 6 months of playing with my buell on my laptop trying to get a race map loaded to go with the exhaust and it was a nightmare. It wasn't because of the bike, just because I'm better with a wrench than I am with a computer, plus the map I downloaded online turned out not to be good. Now that I've got it on there people say there isn't much of a difference between the fueling between the stock and race maps, so it still has decel pop and doesn't feel much stronger. If it had carbs I could just keep trying different jets, but it doesn't, so I'm stuck.

Not sure about a track bike or a roof, my suggestion would be selling it and buying a supermoto, that's what I'm doing 

[The Buddha]

Runs with choke, dies with throttle is a dead giveaway sign that pilots are clogged. Given that you likely have to split it and chase it with a thin wire etc etc, might as well rejet it with 40/125's and call it a day.

I sell a pack with the jets for your setup for $25 shipped inside US but ... any good dealer should get you 40's in the non bleed style and 125 large round slotted. Then just use #4 washers under the needle and set the floats and air screws to 3.

Cool.
Buddha.