| Author | Message | ||
     Kizoku |
Okay, I am at the end of my rope with this issue I am having... This is my last hope before taking up the pooper by taking my baby into the dealer to be worked on... Here is the issue... Several months ago I was on my way home from work, and my XB started sputtering/choking on me... Seeing a similar issue before, I checked the battery cables and the positive was loose... Not having any tools, I hand tightened it and babied it home (approx 2 mi.)... After getting her home I tightened the positive and double checked the negative... I started her up and it was still having issues and the check engine light was coming on... I thought the battery needed to be replaced, seeing how that was the original battery... No joy there... Troubleshooting the issue between deployments, hasn't been too fruitful for me... And the issues I was seeing got worse to where they are now... I can start her up, but it is apparent she is running mainly on one cylinder with intermittant hits on the other cylinder... Talking with another XB owner here on the island, he told me of similar occurances with his and steered me towards the coil (I was under that thought before, but alter from that deduction for some reason)... So I figured seeing how I am going to change out the coil, might as well do the plugs and wires also... The same problem still exists, and the check engine implies an ECM fault... Could I just need to get the errors cleared, or am I barking up the wrong tree??? | ||
| Blake |
Clearing stored error codes won't help. My advice would be to check the spark plug(s) before anything else. | ||
| Bigdog_tim |
Strongly recommend look at plugs first. Cheaper and a likely suspect with the symptoms you describe. | ||
| Jackbequick |
And check the spark plug leads too, put them across a VOM, shake them and look for a high or intermittent high resistance. If the lengths allow, swap the two leads (both at the plugs and the coil) and see if the problem goes with the swap. Jack | ||
| Al_lighton |
You say you're getting the engine light, but you haven't explicitly said what error code(s) you're getting. Have you read the blink codes? If not, do that and report what you find here and we can be much more helpful. If you're getting more than one code, the problem is rarely the actual faults indicated. Chafed wires are not uncommon and can cause some goofy codes. And remember Al's two rules of motorcycle and auto mechanics: 1) Everything is a grounding problem until proven otherwise. 2) Whatever is wrong with your bike is related to the last thing YOU worked on. I had a lot of the same symptoms you had and all it was was the screw that held a few terminals to chassis ground. Tightened it up and all was well. I have had ground problems on several vehicles behave as just about every type of sypmtom you can imagine. Checking all ground connections is cheap and easy. Al | ||
| Court |
>>>2) Whatever is wrong with your bike is related to the last thing YOU worked on. True motorcycle gospel. I like to have 30 days and a 1,000 or more miles twinxt my last "touch" and any endurance type of riding. I used to, when I thought the bike was ready, load it and ride it from Topeka to St. Louis and back, sparing no abuse, as a shake down run. There are VERY FEW things, in terms of reliability, you can do to improve a stock motorcycle. | ||
| Fullpower |
Let's repeat that in red: There are VERY FEW things, in terms of reliability, you can do to improve a stock motorcycle. | ||
| Road_thing |
Very Few? Name one. I dare you! rt | ||
| Rocketman |
That's factory speak Court. Find the 'non essential' items that make up your ride and you can quickly find an improvement. Not easy on a Buell I grant you. Probably close to impossible except for the spark plugs!  Rocket | ||
| Henrik |
I like to have 30 days and a 1,000 or more miles twinxt my last "touch" and any endurance type of riding. So you're saying bolting the S2 back up a mere 8 hours before I were to head out on a 2300 mile trips was not smart ...  At least I only ran low on blinker fluid. Henrik | ||
| Reepicheep |
Well, speaking as the guy riding behind you, You had a few moments where you were short on "rear brake light fluid" as well I kept thinking to myself... "Man is that guy smooth through the corners, he never touches the brake!" | ||
| Reepicheep |
Oh, and for the actual problem, ditto what Al said. Trace the wiring harness. I have a 9sx, and when I was messing with the ECM I routed the harness back wrong, and it picked up a virtually invisible nick where I (incorrectly) routed it over the battery terminal. It was running funny and throwing an error code that said "nothing is wrong". Then I followed Courts advice, started right at the last thing I had messed with, and found and fixed that routing problem in 15 minutes. | ||
| Jkhawaii |
what code is being set? |
