Hi everyone. Just joined the forum, and I’m happy to be here.  I started riding a year ago and just got my license this past Saturday! My first (and only bike so far) is a 2004 Savage LS650. Picture below if the embed works.

I have a couple of questions about the bike that I’ll get around to posting as time goes on, but I’ll start with my biggest one. The engine backfires with varying loudness, sometimes very loud, when I hit the killswitch to turn the bike off. It’s very loud if I’ve been pushing the bike before turning it off, and it barely makes any noises if it’s just parking lot level driving. It seems to help if I let the bike idle for a while after turning it off, but not always.

I don’t know anything about motorcycle service yet, but I was a bicycle (pedal bicycles) mechanic for 10 years before switching careers a couple of years ago. I have a pretty good intuition for technical things and am excited to start working on the bike.

I appreciate your suggestions/ feedback in advance!

Read the FAQ...and do a simple search. This has been discussed thousands of times on this forum. If you can't clear it with the suggestions found on this forum, then consider it a feature of the bike. My bike only pops when the header pipe comes loose. That is because my bike is properly jetted. Look at that...I gave you the most common answers.

BTW, welcome.

Thanks for the links!  I guess I have a lot to learn about the search feature on this site. I did try searching before posting and didn’t come up with anything, but maybe I wasn’t using the right terminology.

I started by checking my exhaust header nuts - one was tight and one was maybe a tad loose. I am also going to play with my idle mix and idle speed to see if I can find a happier spot there.  

One thing I noticed was that my throttle cable adjustment seems to have a little too much play in the system. The barrel adjuster up at the handlebar is maxed out and the screw by the engine is also maxed, and there still a bit of slack in the system. I didn’t see an obvious way of re-anchoring the cable or adding any more tension. I’m assuming I’m missing something.