SuzukiSavage.com - Bike cutting out and stalling while riding

jakano

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Bike cutting out and stalling while riding
07/27/08 at 19:10:52

Hi everyone,
I'm new to the board and new to Savage riding and I had a problem I was hoping you folks could help me with. My bike is a 97 savage with some kind of after market or modified stock exhaust (i have no idea which but it seems louder than a stock exhaust would be).

I was riding to work the other morning on the freeway and out of no where my bike started sputtering and trying to die. I of course was at freeway speeds of around 65-70 mph. I was watching the RPM gauge (add on piece) and it was dropping from 4000 down to 1000 then back up. It did eventually die on me but I was able to restart it while I was still moving at around 50 mph. It did this the entire ride to work. This was a little frightening to go through on the freeway in morning rush hour traffic as you could imagine.

I finally made it to work and parked the bike. When I left for the day it did all of this again so I didnt try to ride on the freeway any more but instead got off and took surface streets. I made it a few more miles until it finally died for good and I couldn't get it running again.
I am assuming there is a problem with the carb but wasn't quite sure and I didnt want to go tearing it apart and find out that wasn't the case.

We have owned this bike for several years but it has been my wife's bike (I had a harley) and she never had this problem. The bike has always had the back firing problem which I assumed was from the previous owner putting on the different exhaust and maybe not rejetting the carb. I really like riding this bike and want to fix this problem but am not really sure where to begin.

I went today to pick up the bike and when I got home It started right up but I didn't try to ride it for fear of getting stranded again. It seems to me to be a crab problem all the way since it really felt like it was starving for fuel but I am no mechanic.

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Sandy Koocanusa Serious Thumper Offline Don't blame me. I didn't vote for him. Posts: 1878 Bigfork, MT Gender:	Re: Bike cutting out and stalling while riding Reply #1 - 07/27/08 at 19:15:48 The first thing I would try is: Set the petcock to "Pri" and see how it runs. There are other steps, but take them one at a time. If you do 9 things at once, you won't know which one fixed it, so you won't know what the problem was.
Back to top	Savage: (adj)1. Wild 2. Uncivilized : Primitive 3. Ferocious 4. Cruel or merciless : Brutal --- Webster's. (n.) 1. A motorcycle named for its seat.--- Sandy's unabridged IP Logged

Max_Morley

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Re: Bike cutting out and stalling while riding
Reply #2 - 07/27/08 at 19:16:53

First step insure adequate amount of fuel or go on reserve, check vacuum line from back of fuel valve to intake near carb for kinking, broken or porus and not allowing enough vac signal to fuel tap. There are many discussions on this board about your concern. Seek and yee shall find more than you ever wanted to know. Max

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Max at Thumper Acres. '96 Savage bagger, '03 Savage w/Cozy sidecar for wifeni.

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Keith_T Senior Member Offline Posts: 289 Northern Illinois Gender:	Re: Bike cutting out and stalling while riding Reply #3 - 07/27/08 at 19:55:54 My bike has done this to me twice after extended high speed runs. I will try to leave it on PRI if I go on the tollway. I don't take this bike on the tollway much and I never have this problem when riding less than 70 mph.
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verslagen1

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Re: Bike cutting out and stalling while riding
Reply #4 - 07/27/08 at 21:02:47

If she runs fine in prime then most likely you need a new vac line (carb to petcock) and don't forget to put clamps on.

The vac supply is a little bit marginal and if there's a leak then the petcock shuts off.

Second possibility is a bad diaphram in the petcock. check for fuel in the vac line, there shouldn't be any. If there is either buy a new petcock or convert to manual and throw away the vac line. Also the diaphram can get hard.

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meck

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Re: Bike cutting out and stalling while riding
Reply #5 - 07/28/08 at 06:17:52

I had the same issue on my '88. The thing that got me confused was that it still had problems idling while in PRI, so I didn't think it was the petcock. However, even in PRI, there still needs to be some vacuum to pull the fuel through. I converted my petcock to manual (see tech section) and it's working great now. I will be ordering a new petcock at some point, but I'm in no rush now. If you do end up doing the mod, be sure to cap off those vac ports properly.

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1988 LS650

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jakano YaBB Newbies Offline SuzukiSavage.com Rocks! Posts: 3	Re: Bike cutting out and stalling while riding Reply #6 - 07/29/08 at 18:35:03 Fantastic guys thank you so much for the info!!!! I really didn't want to go tearing into a carb at all so I hope this is the problem.
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jakano YaBB Newbies Offline SuzukiSavage.com Rocks! Posts: 3	Re: Bike cutting out and stalling while riding Reply #7 - 08/03/08 at 14:18:37 Ok so I finally got a chance today to ride the bike in pri and it is still doing the same thing. So I guess I need to look for some other culprit?
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bill67 Serious Thumper Offline old tired Posts: 8517 genoa city wisconsin Gender:	Re: Bike cutting out and stalling while riding Reply #8 - 08/03/08 at 14:34:27 Run some carburetor cleaner like sea foam in the gas see if that clears it up.
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Digger

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Re: Bike cutting out and stalling while riding
Reply #9 - 08/10/08 at 20:16:29

jakano wrote on 08/03/08 at 14:18:37:

Ok so I finally got a chance today to ride the bike in pri and it is still doing the same thing. So I guess I need to look for some other culprit?

Jak,

The next step would be to disconnect the petcock vacuum line at the petcock. Plug the petcock vacuum fitting and plug the end of the vacuum line.

If this fixes your problem (as it did mine), you most likely have a leaky petcock diaphragm.

IHTH!

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Digger
2001, Metallic Glacial Blue, Raptor Petcock, Verslavy (first hole) (otherwise, mechanically, the bike is stock), 13,xxx miles
I don't own a cage.
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