230 miles through the Az mountains. Temps were 70s to 80s so the weather was perfect. :) Lots of twisties and occasional 65mph speed limits so speeds were 65 to 85mph. 8) For those with the new GS500Fs, don't worry at all about speed and power. To pass most anything, just go down two gears. At an indicated 70 in 6th, I'd just go to 4th and gas it. By the time I was past a car the GS would be hitting 90, then back to 5th, gain some distance and go to 6th again. 8)
The only scary part was being 35 miles from home and having it start trying to die, sputtering. :dunno: I'm thinking bad gas(boy was it cheap) at the last stop or overheating. :dunno: I'd been stuck behind two semis through a deep canyon doing 20mph in 95 degree heat for maybe five miles. :x Then climbed out and back to 75mph and it missed until I shifted to 5th and held it at 6,000rpms until I got home. It seems fine now. No extra noises. Oil level is good. Plus look lean, but my jets and K&N aren't here yet. :x
What do the GS gurus think ? Lean, hot, bad gas, alien death ray ? :dunno:
I don't know if this helps, but I was riding my bike on the highway in 5th gear between 9-10K (80mph on speedo = 72mph w/ 10% error) pretty much nonstop for several minutes. It started to sputter and eventually I lost throttle response and the engine died. I pulled over on the left shoulder of the highway rather quickly and checked my tank. There was plenty of gas. I then checked my clear fuel line (direct line, no petcock switch) and noticed it was empty.
My guess is I had somehow starved my carbs. I let the gasoline "catchup" for about 30 seconds and it started right away. I mean, what gives? I have a direct fuel line (transparent) to my carbs (u-bend from bottom of tank back into bottom of carbs) and the line is 5/8" ID. This is the second time my bike has done this: once with crappy, petcock switch & old vacuum tubes from Hell and once with new direct line to carbs. :dunno:
Prolly starving for gas. Happens to me often on the highway if I "play" with the throttle a lot (high revving, overtaking, etc.). I can tell because I have a clear in-line gas filter and it is bone dry every time when that happens. Have to pull over, set to prime and wait for a few minutes before continuing.
The stock petcock sucks donkey's butt. Maybe it's just old (mine's 89). I am toying with the idea of swapping the spring in the petcock to another one that is less stiff and see if that helps.
For now, I just ride like a nice boy at about 6K, go with the flow of the traffic instead of trying to go a wee bit faster.
Cheers,
e.
Thanks, guys. I thought about gas too at the time. But I don't have the petcock positions memorized so I couldn't reach down and turn it to prime, and I was in a pretty fast crowd of cars at the time and didn't want to pull over. Well, unless it died of course. :roll: That is strange if these bikes can starve out like that. Both my other street bikes had vacuum petcocks too. Only one of them sputtered like this once in town. I got it home and changed plugs and it never did it again.