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Message started by JohnD on 08/16/13 at 20:28:07

Title: excess gas
Post by JohnD on 08/16/13 at 20:28:07

My bike would not start yesterday and it sounds like it's not getting any fuel. I got the seat off and started looking around the carb and air intake. In the bottom of the air filter compartment there was about a cup of gas and the filter its self was soaked half way up with gas. I cleaned out the gas and got a new filter to put in but I don't want to put the new one in until I find out what caused the mess in the first place. Any ideas? Please!

Title: Re: excess gas
Post by verslagen1 on 08/16/13 at 20:34:01

test your petcock, hit the link below, go down to petcock, 1st item.

sounds like you don't have enough air, a wet filter will choke it.

check your crankcase for a high level of oil
if so change it as you might have gas in your oil.
gas thinned oil don't work so good.

Title: Re: excess gas
Post by Serowbot on 08/16/13 at 23:24:23

I'm the resident expert on excess gas... :-[...
... and I agree with Versy,... test that pet... ;)...

Title: Re: excess gas
Post by Oldfeller on 08/17/13 at 11:27:04

6D727664777275731D0 wrote:

Now me, I am the BAD PETCOCK expert here on the list and I do believe you have one.

John D, I just gots me one small question to ask you about the situation you discovered in your air box.

What would have happened if you had a spit back event when you were cranking your bike with that half a cup of gasoline down there soaking half of your air filter element with liquid gasoline?

(think about your airbox volume sitting there just plumb full of gas vapor/air mixture with a gasoline wetted wick sitting there all ready to go)

Can you say "Boom !!! Whooosh ....."

~~Now this "go up in flames" thing has NEVER happened yet on a Savage~~, <READ DOWN BELOW PLEASE FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FROM BERT'S FORUM> thank goodness, but we have had an easy half dozen people report what you just reported, a bad vacsucker petcock dumping gasoline into their air box. We have had more people than that say they got gas down into their sump.
(logically they got it in their airbox too but just didn't realize it)

The moderators still are debating on what stance to take concerning getting pro-active about telling people to remove the prone to fail stock vac petcock and I just saw two simply suggesting you test yours although they both knew durn well what the test should show.

What's scary to me is that newbies in general have always shown a fairly common inability to understand the Serowbot Petcock Test and they commonly just do part of it and then they mis-interpret the information they do get from the test about 30% of the time.

And the most common misunderstanding of all is the ABSOLUTE NECESSITY of blocking off the vac line with the golf tee and I can't count the number of folks over the years who put it all back the way it was before actually completing the test routine because they didn't understand the test, didn't do it correctly and thought it was "too much trouble".

Me, I take a much cleaner more draconian stance. Gas in the airbox or gas in the sump, TEAR THE STOCK VACSUCKER OFF OF YOUR BIKE IMMEDIATELY. Screwing around with it for the 1-2 weeks it takes to do the Serowbot Petcock Test correctly is a VERY BAD BET on an item that has ALREADY failed and dumped dangerous amounts of gasoline into your airbox or into your sump.

Now, is this fair to you, John D, who are smart enough to do the test correctly? No, it isn't -- but of the next five newbies faced with the same situation 2 of the group will be the ones I am talking about.

But then again, that's just me --- you jest go ahead and ride that bike around for 1-2 weeks and Lord willing, you won't get any spitbacks through your intake valves during that period of time until you finish the test ..... or worse yet, you can procrastinate for a week or so before you even do anything.

(Yup, that's commonly what some of them actually do, absolutely nothing, for weeks and weeks and weeks until they get 'round to it).

:o

http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/264/2/7/riding_the_bomb_to_hell_by_skittycat-d5fhqz6.jpg

Title: Re: excess gas
Post by WD on 08/17/13 at 16:37:15

That's right, you weren't on Bert's forum...

I remember 5 KABOOMS, back then we told people to toss the stock petcock in favor of one meant for VS800 Intruders. 2 total loss burn to the ground bike fires in So Cal, one simple grenaded airbox and carb with no engine or frame damage, one blew the carb apart as shards, one blown to pieces frame.

Just change the time bomb John, you have all the symptoms of an incipient grenade or fire. $30 bucks and no more wasted fuel, wasted air/oil filters, no more wasted oil... and no traumatic amputation of the family jewels when the air box goes off. That's enough vapor to blow a 3' diameter stump out of the ground with proper placement.

Title: Re: excess gas
Post by Serowbot on 08/17/13 at 17:52:07

Now that we've scared John to death... (on his first post ever)...

Here's link to the test.. it includes info on the Raptor petcock swap... ;)...
Test your Petcock,.. don't just turn it to Prime.. (http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1251932429/1)

Title: Re: excess gas
Post by Oldfeller on 08/17/13 at 18:11:30

Whups, WD -- there are like 5 historically known burned Savages off Bert's old list due to this failure/error on the part of the stock vacuum actuated petcock ???

My goodness, I certainly didn't know that -- it puts a different shine on the old apple now don't it?

According to a warning issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), "the fuel control valve diaphragm and the fuel valve may drip fuel. In the presence of an ignition source, dripping fuel poses the risk of fire." NHTSA apparently considers the "may drip fuel" RISK of fire to be worth a recall.

This is the language that has been used by NHTSA in three different Honda petcock recalls and on one Kawasaki recall.

The Savage petcock seems to meet the NHTSA requirements for a hazardous situation recall and they are the regulatory body that such things should be reported to. They are the ones who signal the manufacturer to issue a recall campaign.

Aggravating the Savage situation is the fact there is no OFF position for this stock Savage vac petcock to set it up correctly for long term storage so as we were told earlier in the month by the guy with the dirt bike Savage.

He felt his petcock was dangerous as his vac petcock failed on him in storage just sitting there in his garage, leaking out gasoline on the floor where it was threatened with ignition by the pilot light on his water heater. Ours has the same situation, no off position -- if the petcock diaphragm fails in storage then the entire supply of gas in the tank is all available to slowly be leaked out.

The Savage likes to leak its gas either into the air box or down into the sump, in both cases gravity and the bike's tilt deciding which pathway the fuel slowly trickles and accumulates.

====================

If JohnD chose to be proactive, he could go here and give NHTSA the particulars of his incident so they could add them to their data base.

https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/ivoq/

Go here and read their page a bit -- informative to say the least. Right now the Suzuki LS650 or S40 are not even listed for the 2002 year model that I have in the drop down menus. The list apparently grows as people report issues like JohnD's.

And for JohnD (since he has to be the one who does it) here is a link to an actual on-line situation report form.

https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/VehicleComplaint/index.xhtml

Title: Re: excess gas
Post by Oldfeller on 08/17/13 at 18:30:58

4650475A42575A41350 wrote:

Are you holding out some hope that he has a stuck float valve assembly? If so, it is still a vac petcock failure as there should be no fuel flow to the carb bowl if there isn't any engine vac suction to cause it to flow.

And the response of "do the test" really doesn't play for much as it doesn't include any testing of the float bowl assembly for sticking (other than whacking it sharply with a big screwdriver handle that I stuck in there several years ago).

Dave has offered to help rewrite the whole mess to make it clearer and more concise (so the kiddies will actually go do it) and please also to include all the stuff we have learned over the last 2 years. You and Dave might want to be about that as you are now in a foot race with the very sluggish glacial response time of NHTSA.

Serowbot, early on you reported one of your own personal Savages leaked gas out on the concrete too.

It's gasoline, it poses a fire risk when it does that -- don't you think so?

Like Serowbot, how many of us have had a petcock fuel leak, either on to the concrete, into the airbox or into the sump?

Just respond briefly guys, I am sure we can collect enough incidents to get the Savage ls650/S40 included into the NHTSA drop down lists for some proper official data collection.

================

Suzuki has better functioning vac petcocks that go on their better bikes -- and I bet NHTSA would tell them to put "the good one" that fits properly on on our bike for free if we just all reported our issues with the current vac petcock to NHTSA.

Title: Re: excess gas
Post by swedishbiker on 08/18/13 at 00:15:50

You can put an extra valve in the hose. John Deere law mover "AM107340 Drain Valve" should do.

Title: Re: excess gas
Post by Steve H on 08/18/13 at 07:38:31

An additional fuel shutoff that is inline is a good idea but doesn't solve all of the failure modes with the stock petcock.

Given the low mileage at which many of them fail, I would have to say there are manufacturing defects or extremely cheap (not meant to last) manufacturing issues. Either of those situations is a manufacturer's issue and should be fixed either voluntarily or through a forced recall.

Before mine failed, I noticed the fuel in the line pulsating while the engine was running like it had a vac operated fuel pump. Mine was 26 years old and 23k miles at failure. It failed by letting fuel through the diaphram into the vacuum line but only with the engine running. No leaks or problems when sitting. From what i've read, it seems most don't make it to near that age and are usually lower mileage than that also.

Change the petcock and save yourself loads of problems.

Title: Re: excess gas
Post by WD on 08/18/13 at 08:08:25

We quit recommending the VS800 MANUAL petcocks about 2001, when there was a forced recall on them due to defective innards. Suzuki had to do a full redesign of the rubber/plastic selector plate due to leaking issues. Took 3 tries and 8 months to get a good replacement on Lisa's Intruder.

Suzuki r&d and qc departments leave a lot to be desired. The car/cute ute lines were even worse.

Title: Re: excess gas
Post by Oldfeller on 08/18/13 at 08:17:37

After years of answering all the endless questions that all turned out to be the sorry vac petcock in the end, I have reached the point I will be offering the NHTSA safety issue reporting page to those newbies who have issues that warrant its use.

Suzuki and the other bike manufacturers ARE AWARE of these issues. They are all hunkered down like turtles in their shells. None of them have done anything voluntarily, each have had to be forced by their Forums (that's us) to deal with it unwillingly. The lever that was used was NHTSA issue reporting.

Step #1 is for enough people to fill out the on-line form when they have a gas leaker vac petcock (and we have a half dozen air boxes a year, but it seems to be growing larger as the bikes age out).

People who have gas in sump episodes should fill out the NHTSA form as well, contamination of your oil (thinning) has been associated with engine damage (piston galling & ring sticking & seizure). This too is a safety issue as when your engine abruptly dies in traffic that is dangerous to you physically.

Suzuki should do a recall campaign and replace the bad OEM petcocks on any stock machine of any year model.

Modder/Bobber/Ryca people have likely already replaced theirs with a Raptor just to get the increased gas flow at high speed that their modding efforts require, so they are likely already done already.

We are going to have to start telling folks step #1 on the performance mods list is to replace the stock vac petcock with a Raptor. If you don't do this the newbie modder person is doomed to complications in tuning, etc. that they need not suffer through -- good reliable gas supply makes all tuning easier.

If your bike has any mods to the airbox or air filter I would not report your issues to NHTSA on the report form. You screwed around with the stock vacuum level when you did those mods (or Suzuki will so contest).

And I would have to concur, except that true leakers are a failure of the diaphragm itself and I can't really make that leap of faith that your airbox mods caused that to happen. It definitely caused all the trickle of gas performance issues though, I can concur with that thought completely.

Title: Re: excess gas
Post by swedishbiker on 08/18/13 at 08:37:29

I agree, but is there anything that works for decades?
Other things breaks down faster. Say any car that last for 40 years as my Land Rover ;D
I have a filter in the hose and see a lot of air bubbles in it when engine i s running. Guess it's time to make the Raptor change. In prime the bubbles are gone.

Title: Re: excess gas
Post by Charon - FSO on 08/18/13 at 09:55:44

With the coming of electronic fuel injection the problem of vacuum petcocks will go away all by itself. I suspect all the makers are counting on this. I am also sure they will not replace a vacuum operated petcock with a manual one of any variety, both for operator convenience and safety. They may be forced to use an electrically-operated petcock instead of vacuum, which will avoid the issue of fuel leaking into intake manifolds and running somewhere else. I also suspect they will decide rubber/plastic parts have a limited lifetime (note the recommendation that brake lines be replaced at four-year intervals), and if they fail after that time it is not their responsibility.

Title: Re: excess gas
Post by Oldfeller on 08/18/13 at 15:24:47

Three Honda bikes & scooters and a Kawasaki cruiser all got safety recalled and the leaking petcocks were replaced with superior units by means of a NHTSA safety recall.

I don't think the NHTSA particularly dices out all that finer reasoning -- if it leaks fuel in their eyes it is unsafe and it is the manufacturer's responsibility to make it safe.

So the manufacturer picked a petcock that doesn't last, that's on the manufacturer for having made that bad choice. The manufacturer installs corrective parts to clear the NHTSA recall and then immediately passes the $$$ buck directly back to the vendor who made the short lived bad parts by charging them back all the dollar costs of the rework campaign that was caused by their part.

In cases of any modifications on the owner's part that contributed to or CAUSED the issue, yes, they can take a pass on that (and this could possibly include all the bobbered, RYCA'd and performance modded bikes here on the list that no longer have the stock air box and restrictive air filter).

But the key point for US here on the list is to start acting like a fuel leaking petcock is a safety issue -- we need to start treating it like a safety issue every time a sump or an airbox gets fuel contaminated by a vac petcock. Unless something can show the float bowl float valve is obviously stuck wide open all the time, then the vac petcock has indeed already failed and no further tests are needed.

Instead fast action by the owner is needed and these newbies should be instructed to block off the tap and plug the vac hose and run it in prime until the replacement parts can arrive.

==========

What is there to say about 10% ethanol gasoline's role in all of this rubber destruction and petcock leakage -- I dunno.

Some courtroom somewhere will decide all that in due time, I suspect.

E85 is a dead horse for us at this point in time as it would have all these issues and more if it ever got put into a Savage motorcycle's gas tank.

Title: Re: excess gas
Post by WD on 08/18/13 at 16:08:36

Mine was still going strong at 8 years of use when the tank got holed. You might want to tally up how many bent/snapped shifter rods we've had as well, definitely a safety recall issue, they always break on busy roads, or at an intersection. Broke my factory one in 1999 or 2000, broke the replacement actual steel one in 2011, bike is a 98 model.

I can remember dozens of issues with bent or snapped linkages between just the 2 USA-centric forums.

Will start another thread... right now.

Title: Re: excess gas
Post by Dave on 08/19/13 at 04:38:22

686C7E7F7268737972707E691B0 wrote:

You can put an extra valve in the hose. John Deere law mover "AM107340 Drain Valve" should do.

Puttng a shut off in the fuel hose won't help anything. The failure of the vacuum potcock is caused by the diaprhagm disintegrating....and whe the diaphragm become porous the fuel flows down the vacuum line......where it is not supposed to be. The float and needle and seat in the carb are bypassed....and the fuel flows directly into the vacuum port.

Title: Re: excess gas
Post by Digger on 08/22/13 at 19:40:14

1102460 wrote:

....The car/cute ute lines were even worse.

Whaddat?

TIA!

Title: Re: excess gas
Post by Stealthmobile on 08/23/13 at 15:42:25

oldfeller, you do know how to get a persons attention. after reading in other posts I just went ahead and changed mine (bike has 1600 kms). seemed to be a safe and pre "duh" move. and now am glad I did. I agree with you on this, safety first.