Howdy y’all, just bought a 2012 boulevard s40 for my first bike
and while I fell in love with her on the test drive, she is looking like quite a bit of a project after only a month…
Some background info: I live in western Washington, bike has 6,000 miles on it, and the previous owner ~said~ the bike tends to backfire quite a bit although he never experienced any other problems (liar?)
Anyways.. test drive was amazing. Couple loud, gunshot like backfires on the downshift, but I thought it sounded cool and would be fun to play around with as he said there weren’t any engine troubles despite the backfiring. However, once I took it home, I started to get more issues…
For example, the bike died on the road once when slowing down from 50 to turn off the highway, and once more when coming to a stop at a red light. (Also coming from going about 50). I figured I might have messed up shifting the first time, as I had no problem starting back up again. And the second time proved troublesome so I switched to reserve at which point she started and got me home (another 15 minutes on the freeway).
Over the next few weeks, I took her out twice to experience some heightened backfiring, sputtering, loss of power, and even a couple of shut offs while on the freeway. Some light research on the forum led me to believe the petc0ck was at fault. I pulled the vacuum hose to find it had ripped on the carb end… I thought I found my answer, but even after trimming it and retightening I was experiencing the same issues :'( Next step, prime & cap. After setting to prime and capping/clamping the hose shut I could barely go around my neighborhood before the engine failed in a flurry of backfires.
At this point I’m stumped. I pulled the carb and cleaned (it didn’t look bad), replaced the spark ⚡️ Plug (showed lean), recharged the battery, ran it with the fuel cap off, everything I could think of and everything I could try from online. I’m at a loss.
In her current state, she runs fine cold, no backfires, no stuttering. But as soon as she warms up, I can’t even turn the throttle a quarter of the way before the engine cuts out and won’t start up again. I’m forced to wait ~10 minutes for her to cool down enough to start back up.
Right now I’m looking to replace the vacuum hose entirely, maybe trimming it was a bad idea… any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Sak