dangerdave
Ex Member
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Folks, Recently picked up a 2001 Savage with about 3,500 miles on it. In spite of its low mileage, however, the bike looks like it's been sitting outside since day one and has never been cared for as it should have been. The bike seemed to run fine, however, in spite of some expected issues (junk in the fuel tank, dirty oil and filter, etc.). Perhaps significant to the problem(s) at hand is the fact that the bike shows clear signs of salt pitting (it was acquired from a friend in Philadelphia, so all of this makes sense).
Foolishly, I thought that the bike might really benefit from one of those "routine dealership service" visits that I have studiously avoided in the past. And here our problems begin. For almost $300, I got:
1. A new and exciting valve noise that was not there before; 2. an oil leak of mammoth proportion (it appears to be the infamous plug/cap leak detailed by others); 3. a crankcase overfilled with cheap oil (a problem which is slowly remedying itself as the bike "bleeds out"); 4. and, perhaps most significantly, a bike that seems to intermittently refuse to idle/run when cold.
A little more about the bike and what I've observed: The carburetor is a stock Mikuni which, to my knowledge, has not been rejetted or previously modified. (I did drill out the brass plug and attempt to correct some of the bike's backfiring issues by enriching idle mixture, but wasn't able to yield much and returned the screw to stock setting when the bike started giving me trouble.) The bike seems to have a loose/rusted exhaust baffle, which causes a strange whistling in the exhaust note (related to engine RPM and not motion, and hence not related to belt or other usual suspects for this sort of thing).
The most significant problem (number 4 from above) manifests itself as follows: The bike, when cold, will start with the choke on and warm up in its usual way. Once the choke is fully off, the bike begins to idle erractically. Power off-idle is almost nonexistent--the engine sputters and coughs before finally catching up with itself if given throttle, but without throttle, the bike will rather quickly die at idle and will only restart after much cranking. Any application of the choke at idle when it is running rough kills the engine immediately. The bike seems, moreover, to be flooding out. Also, I have noticed that every time it exhibits this kind of behavior (three times during the week since I got it back from the "st"ealership), I have drained a significant quantity of gas from the airbox drain line (much more than could possibly be condensing from the crankcase breather in the amount of time the engine has been running). At other times, when the bike is idling fine, there has been none in this drain line.
I'm prepared to put the bike up for the winter (it's been too cold to ride far around here for the last few weeks) and begin troubleshooting the problems. Plans for the winter include cleaning/rechroming the header (massive surface rust), installing a Screamin' Eagle muffler, rejetting the carb, and modifying the white spacer, as well as fixing the plug/cap leak and readjusting the valves (to correct what I believe was a sloppy dealer job). But I don't want to undertake any of this until the idle problem is solved. Hence, the carburetor is coming off next week for cleaning and adjustment (everything is in need of a degreaser bath).
That should give some of the better minds in the group enough info to work with. Any thoughts on what might be causing the intermittent idle problems? Carb float problem? Are any of these problems possibly related?
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