in need of some help! my names jon and im havin some issues, ive got an 04 savage bobber thats been broke down for about 6 months now. one day i was riding to work and it started to run really ruff, then it cut out, at first i thought that the cam chain had snapped, but nope. i pulled the cover off and every thing looked fine. checked spark and it didnt have too strong of one so i cleaned up the plug a bit, got good spark but still nothing. checked and it seems to be gettin gas. everything seems to be in order, but still wont fire. starter just keeps turning the motor. btw bikes got about 16000 miles on it. any help would be awsome. thanks

These things are notorious for having enough battery to spin the motor nicely & fail to fire off due to weak spark. You saw a spark generated by a free spinning engine, no compression to draw current in the starter, leaving power to spare to fire the plug. Make sure the battery is fuly charged, use some starting fluid, LIGHTLY,,, because as Versy says,, best to know you have a fuel in there to light off than wonder, & do make sure its breathing easy, it wont kill it to pull the air filter to get it started,

crestview florida btw

ok so went and got a fresh spark plug, undid the intake duct to be sure its breathing, and used a lil starter fluid. but nothing, still not starting. am i missin somethin here?

thumper wrote on 02/06/12 at 09:28:38:


You need three things: air, fuel, and spark.

Air is easy, you've opened up the intake. Fuel, is also not hard here since you are shooting in some starter fluid (it should at least fire once or twice on that).

Now to check the spark. Pull the plug, stick it in the spark cap, position it near the head and turn the starter. you should see a nice bright spark and if you're lucky, you'll feel it running through you too. don't worry, it isn't enough to hurt, just enough to wake you up a little  

a few years ago I had trouble starting in the cold because my battery was low. enough juice to turn 'er over but not enough to spark at the same time, so that is a legitimate concern. Even if you get a spark using the previously stated test method, the engine is a lot easier to turn over sans spark plug. maybe if you had a second one to plug the hole while testing the other out of the engine....

thumper wrote on 02/06/12 at 11:55:20:


my mistake, i should have re-read the whole thread before i started shooting my mouth off.

if you know it has air/fuel/spark and it still won't fire that doesn't leave much fun stuff. could the exhaust be plugged up?

Do you know when the last time the valves were adjusted was? Can you also verify the starter solenoid is working? I don't think slightly-out-of-spec valves could do much more than make the engine run like crap, but who knows. maybe an adjustment locknut worked itself loose. a compression test wouldn't be a bad idea either.

Put the battery on a charger and try and start her like that (if you have a charger with a "start" setting), verify your valve clearances. pulling the head is a good bit of work that we might want to try to avoid if you can, albeit it is very informative.

if you have the ability, take a video of trying to start the bike. seeing a process and hearing the result helps a lot. heck, i noticed a huge difference in how my starter sounded between batteries (going from old stock to bigcrank to mini battery). those weak battery starter sounds still haunt my dreams to this day....  :'(

ill get it sealed up and put back together and figure out how to send a video  of me tryin to start it, maybe im missin somethin thats a dead givaway, who knows

ill check it out, i had the battery on a 97 i have for about a week when that one crapped out, seemed to do fine. ill hook it up and check tho, thanks man