OK,

Once upon a time ago, my S40 went to the shop, got two new tires and was tuned up, then the rains started (Florida) and I let it set idle for 3 months.

When I started riding it again, it of course didn't run well.  Its been my experience if they sit more than two weeks, the gas seems to gum up the carb.

So... the odessey began.

When I would start it, sometimes it would run fine, other times the minute you cut the throttle to idle, it would die.  You could restart it but you had to hold the throttle WAY OPEN and keep it that way when you stopped or it would quite again.  Sometimes when going down the road in this condition if you opened the throttle up, it would surge and buck then die.

I assumed the accelerator pump in the carb might be sticky.  Somedays it ran just fine, so I put some Sea Foam through it and that didn't solve the problem.

This problem normally appeared almost immediately on startup, but one day, I drove it 10 miles and it was fine, only to act up on the last mile home.

By that point I figured it was trash in the tank, petcock or fuel filter, so I sent it to the shop.

They cleaned the carb, it started fine, I took it down the street about a 1/10 of a mile, it died I brought it back to them.  They flushed the petcock out and I drove it home.  Seemed fine.

Three days later I drove it and the electrics died entirely.  Towed it back to the shop, and they replaced the battery and some wires.  I picked it up, drove it 1/10 of a mile and then brought it back because the fuel problem appeared again.

The worked on it another day, test drove it 15 miles and gave it back to me today.  I drove it 8 miles home, no problem.

I took it out again this evening and ...splutters, surges, and dies.

At this point the shop has had 4 tries at fixing this, I hate to sent it back for try number 5.

Any suggestions on this?  I'm about at the point of tearing off every in front of the carburetor off to see if the problem goes away.  The bike is a 2006 with just under 9k miles.

I really don't consider myself better than average at repairs, but the shop isn't winning this one...LOL.


               Thanks,

                        Hal

Mine gave trouble from day one at 7400 miles but took about 1000 miles to figure it out. You now have no reserve.  

Victory.  

I switched the stock petcock out for the Raptor 660 petcock this morning.  Hardest part was getting the hoses off.  The entire thing took less than 30 minutes and now my bike runs great.

There appears to be some subtle mechanical thing about getting gasoline out of the tank that just seems to make it run better...LOL.


              Thanks for all the help,

                             Hal