ok i just got my first bike a 1987 savage, i just bought in monday and did a little work to it to get it street worthy, yesterday i took my first ride for about 4 hours and it ran great until i was on the way home i was cruizing in 4th gear doing about 40 mph or so, and all of a sudden i heard what allmost sounded like a pop or ping (similar to detonation, but i dont think this was the problem seeing as i was using 93 octane) i heard this about 3 or 4 times, came up to a stop light and pulled in the clutch and it just died,  after getting off the road i couldnt get it running again, it still turns over but sounds like a loss of compression maybe? i am thinking maybe the timing chain jumped and i bent a valve, as i said before this is my first bike and i am just wondering if anyone else has has this problem? any information is appreciated, thanks

That always works when I run out... ...

it didnt run out of gas, i know it was not the petcock or the carb, i had the carb rebuilt tuesday, and the stock petcock is allways "on" and i just added a fuel cutoff and filter between it and the carb, there was plenty of fuel in the fuel filter, im fairly certian it is a  mechanical problem, i have read that the timing chain tensioner or somthing wears out on these bikes, mine has 12k miles but everything i have read says they do not usually go out til around 30k miles

Breakdowns always feel so serious,.. but are most often simple...

Check the easy stuff first...
If you're sure it ain't fuel,.. check the sidestand and clutch lever cutouts... if they get dirty or corroded, it'll shut you down just like you describe...
Disconnect, clean, and reconnect them...
Keep fingers crossed, but do this before you go digging deep... ...



Yup, check the kill switch on the handlebars too.   And the position of the ignition switch -- we got a "parking lights only" position that I remember finding one time when the bike was new to me.

 
car7083 wrote on 04/19/12 at 18:12:27:


Here is what a gone cam chain tensioner sounds like ....   (note the bike still runs when the cam chain tensioner goes ... it doesn't die like it is out of gas)

here is the thread, got us lots of examples of running dead cam chain tensioner bikes ......    http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1308708632




You need to listen to what folks are saying -- your bike stopped and won't start.   That is gas or electrical.   Check them switches and key positions and side stand switches.

Take your air filter out of the hole and spray ether (staring fluid) into the air box, turn the ignition to the proper "on" and hit the starter with a fully charged battery.

Why fully charged?  Because a partial charge on the battery (less than 10 volts when cranking) will spin the motor but the black box won't fire the plug if the voltage drops below 10 volts while cranking.   It is a little quirk Suzuki black boxes are known for ....

Charge your battery.  Shoot the ether.  Turn the bike "on". Crank the bike.  If it even tries to start, you got gas supply issues.

If it doesn't try to start, you got spark issues.








You had the carb rebuilt last Tuesday.   hmmmmm ..... this may be a Mikey issue.

 
Ah, we get closer to the real cases now.  

You are intentionally using a known bad vac petcock but have added an exterior manual cut off to the system for $6.  

Hey, perhaps your known defective petcock has SOME OTHER (unknown to you) symptoms that only exist while the bike is running (or not running as the case may be) that it can still do to you while you are still trusting it to run your bike in the ON position?

Did you even read the thread we gave you earlier?  It has a listing of symptoms in it that runs like this.  Anything sound familiar?


1)  Your bike stumbles or acts like it is running out of gas when you are going over 55 mph and then when you get to the pump you can't put in 2 full gallons of gasoline.

2)  Your bike dies on you and you play bloody hell getting it to start again (you can't get any gas from your sick vac petcock no matter what you do to try to get it to start).

3)  When you get a reserve situation and roll the vac petcock toggle to Reserve, the bike continues to stumble for nearly a minute before slowly picking up some power and speed as you struggle to get to a gas station.

4)  You get all sorts of abrupt indications your carburetor is dirty or your jetting suddenly went off (and you haven't changed your exhaust system or air filter system).   Especially applies if SeaFoam, etc has NO EFFECT on your "carburetor issues" whatsoever when you try it.

5)  You smell gasoline either coming from your vac suction line, your airbox or from your oil fill port when you unscrew it (so you can sniff your oil in the sump for the scent of gasoline) because you suspect you have one of the above going on.


If any of them fit, you may want to go back up and read the entire thread very carefully and do the things listed in it.   The link is at the bottom of reply #3 above.

Also note the comments about using the big screwdriver handle to jar your float assembly free from getting stuck at the ends of its travel.

I'm pretty much a newbie to these bikes too, and I've never heard of this in all of my reading here on tis forum, so take this with a grain of salt, but it just popped into my head...

These bikes have an automatic compression release system; powered by a solenoid under the tank. Is it possible this has somehow failed, and is holding the compression release open? That would give a loss of compression, but it seems far fetched to me; I imagine if that failed it would stay closed, not open.

That said, I think you'd have to do something pretty drastic to this engine to bend a valve. None of the rest of what you have described points to anything that catastrophic... I say keep looking for something simple....

Just because you can see the fuel coming down the tube and running into your carburetor, doesn't mean that it's getting into the engine.

The fact that you "Just had the Carb rebuilt" to me is actually a sure sign that you should look there first. The last part that you "Fixed" is often the source of your new problem. Was the bike running normally before the carb was worked on? Who did the work? It's very possible that something wasn't done quite right, and now the newly re-built carb isn't really working right. I would check there...

teabowl13 wrote on 04/20/12 at 14:28:30:


+1


justin_o_guy2 wrote on 04/20/12 at 14:38:29:

Also an interesting direction, provided the item just "fixed" isn't at issue.