Losing power uphill

[evilorion]

Hello everyone. I am a novice rider - I started riding last April. I do my own maintenance on my car but I don't know too much about bikes or troubleshooting them, and I am looking for some advice or suggestions.

My bike was running great all spring, summer, and fall. Recently I noticed my bike has started to lose power while going uphill. I mean it drops serious RPM and no matter what gear or how much throttle I give it, it doesn't seem to pick up. I have determined she climbs up smaller hills better in 2nd gear than she does in 3rd, 4th, etc. Well I don't want to ride any more as I am worried I will worsen the problem, but the bike does start and does ride absolutely fine on flat surface and obviously downhill. Just when I begin to ascend up a hill the bike seems to lose significant power.

I park the bike in a garage, and before I could set the choke and let her rev up to temperature on her own fine. But now when the choke is engaged, I have to give some throttle while she gets to temp or she will cut off. I have also noticed that once she is up to temp, if the choke is engaged she will cut herself off eventually. However, if she is up to temp and the choke is NOT engaged, I can let her sit there and idle indefinitely.

Between my legs I can feel a sort of vibration/shaking in the fuel tank occasionally that I don't recall feeling before I discovered this problem, but I could be wrong. Maybe she's starving? Lack of fuel or gas mixture? I changed the oil and that did not seem to help.

I did not drop the bike, this problem came to my attention on my ride home while climbing a hill to get to my subdivision.

I am wondering if anyone has any idea or suggestion as to what it could be based on my description? If I can't figure something out I will just take her into a shop, but I am pretty handy at doing my own car and home maintenance so I was trying to see if I could fix the problem myself. I hope I provided enough information regarding my problem and I appreciate the time you all took to read and answer my questions.

-eo

[Atesz792]

Is your tank full?
Do you have an inline fuel filter?
What RPM are we talking about going uphill? Forget anything below 4k in 3rd gear (maybe OK down to 3k in 2nd). I only use 4th gear in the twisties if I'm sustaining 100kph for longer than a few seconds. Then again, I only go up there to have fun

[evilorion]

tank is full. I even emptied the first tank and put a new tank in and had the same result. ive tried a couple different degree's of inclines at high RPM and low RPM and it seems like I get the same result. significant loss of power.

I will take a look at the fuel filter and maybe swap that and the plugs and see if that helps before I do anything else

[fidelcashflow]

If you have an inline fuel filter on the bike it may be causing starvation problems. These bikes dont have a fuel pump and rely on gravity to feed the fuel.

[Clutchup210]

Make sure your valve clearance is set and your carbs are balanced. I had the same thing going on a few months after I bought my GS. After I had the valves set, It was like a new bike.

[Atesz792]

Yeah, ditch the fuel filter, you have one in the tank, that's more than enough.