dmoffitt

A biker leaves work one evening and thinks to himself: " It's Friday, I just got paid and it's been a long, hard week. I think I will take the long way home and clear my head." As sometimes happens, the biker pulls into his drive on Sunday afternoon. Sure enough his lady is waiting at the door for him. "What do you mean? Leaving like that without even a call. Gone all weekend long! Leaving me here! You could have been dead and I wouldn't even know where you are!" she shouted. "How would you like it if you didn't see me for a few days?" Now the biker is getting angry that she is spoiling his good mood, so he shouts back "That would be just fine by me!" Sure enough, Monday comes around and he doesn't see her. On Tuesday he still doesn't see her. On Wednesday he sees her...just a little bit out of one eye.

Thanks all for the ideas. I guess my next step is to remove the carbs and verify everything. If someone has a hammer handy, I would rather smash my thumb.

Reading through the Service Manual, it says that the "Compression Pressure" should be 15.2 Bar (1520 KPa). According to my handy, dandy converter that works out to 220 PSI. That can't be right can it? Or are they talking about something else?

I'm back with new numbers. I pulled the plugs and did a compression test, all cylinders were 120 to 125 PSI, Reinstalled the plugs and checked carb balance. All carbs indicated within 1 inch of each other at both idle and ~2500 RPMs. Although the readings were even, they were all lower than I would expect to see @ 10-11 inches at idle. Vacuum would increase to 15-18 inches at 2500 RPMs, deceleration vacuum would jump to 20-25 inches then settle back to 10 inches. The only other thing I see, take a look at the pic. Both cylinders 1 & 2 look like the plug on the left, cylinders 3 & 4 look like the plug on the right. This is after about 400 miles since install.

going to be out of pocket for a couple days, will update when I return.

I just went out and checked to see if it was firing on all four cylinders by taking a temp reading on each cylinder. I removed the dog-bones and took the measurement from the head, next to the spark plug. At idle, all cylinders read within 10 degrees of each other up through 180 degrees as near as I can tell. I tried raising the RPMs but getting accurate readings while holding the throttle open was problematic at best. But I'm pretty sure it's hitting on all fours.

Hmmm. I just bought an infrared thermometer last week! Wohoo! I get5 to use it for something besides just pointing at the cat!

Ok, got it. Thanks.

A few months ago I purchased a 99 RSV with 49K on the clock that had been parked for several years. I have removed and cleaned the carbs, new plugs, fresh oil. The bike starts first turn without the choke, carb balance is near perfect at idle and at higher RPMs, compression on all cylinders is well within specs and the bike pulls strong. The problem is that I am getting a consistent 22 miles per gallon over the last 400 miles. Where do I look now?

As a new guy, who is really a returning old guy, I needed to ask Freebird a question, but the site won't let me send a message directly to him...so I'll ask here. I've looked around the site, and for the life of me I cannot find where to submit my info to become a supporting member. I looked at the top, I looked at the bottom, I looked left then right, nothing. Help.

Thank you for the add. By way of introduction, I am now 72 years young and have been riding since about 19. I rode a 1999 RSV which I purchased in '01 for several years and was mostly a "lurker" here. Around 140K miles later I decided that a Goldwing would work better for my needs at the time. I'm not sorry for the trade, the Wing served me very well, but I could never comfortably hang for the entire day like I could on the RSV. A few months ago a buddy offered me his RSV which had been in storage for at least 5 years, so I jumped at the chance to "get back home" on my true first love. So here I am, lurking in the shadows again.