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1996 Royal Star making weird engine noise!


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Hi Everyone, this is my first time on this site and forum, I hope someone more knowledgeable than me can help. So I had my 1996 Royal Star 1300 V-Twin completely gone over last year and tuned up, ready for the riding season. It performed very well. I am the third owner of this fantastic bike and have never had any real bad issues with it since I bought it in 2008. I rode it up until November, 2019 and then winterized it with gas stabilizer and kept it in my garage until earlier this week.

 

When I went out to start it the battery was dead (five years old) so I bought another battery and went out for a ride. While I was riding it didn't sound quite right to my ear; was making a rattling, weird sound halfway into the ride. It seemed to be losing power as I came up to stops and intersections and had to keep throttling it to keep it from dying. When I finally got it home the sound was louder and it smelled terrible. I checked all the liquids again, fuel, oil and antifreeze, everything was fine. I am baffled as to what could cause this problem just from sitting in my garage all winter, it was a mild winter here in central Indiana. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Steve Weaver

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Hi Everyone, this is my first time on this site and forum, I hope someone more knowledgeable than me can help. So I had my 1996 Royal Star 1300 V-Twin completely gone over last year and tuned up, ready for the riding season. It performed very well. I am the third owner of this fantastic bike and have never had any real bad issues with it since I bought it in 2008. I rode it up until November, 2019 and then winterized it with gas stabilizer and kept it in my garage until earlier this week.

 

When I went out to start it the battery was dead (five years old) so I bought another battery and went out for a ride. While I was riding it didn't sound quite right to my ear; was making a rattling, weird sound halfway into the ride. It seemed to be losing power as I came up to stops and intersections and had to keep throttling it to keep it from dying. When I finally got it home the sound was louder and it smelled terrible. I checked all the liquids again, fuel, oil and antifreeze, everything was fine. I am baffled as to what could cause this problem just from sitting in my garage all winter, it was a mild winter here in central Indiana. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Steve Weaver

 

Hi Steve and :welcome::welcome1::wel_1Wa:,, :2BLUE::group cheers::group cheers:!!

 

Steve,, I am farrr from any form of guru on this stuff but maybe I can get you started with a couple things to look at before the real guru's and people who have actually owned/worked on a bike like your show up.. 1st off though,, let me say I did not know that Yamaha made a 1300cc Royal Star V-Twin and especially a water cooled V-Twin model.. I know that Mom Yam produced a large bored,, thinking 1100cc, V-Twin known as the Virago during that period but I am almost sure even that one was air cooled. I wonder if you could double check your model numbers and make sure we are talking about the same bike before the gurus show up.. Maybe snap a pic or two of your machine and post it..

That said and speaking in generalities,, I do recall having something similar to your situation happen to me many many years ago that prompted me to check my pipes/air filters 1st thing in a new season.. Running an old, beat up Ski Doo snowmobile with a single cylindered, fan cooled engine I discovered after the fact of a melt down that mice had decided to build a nest in the air cooling chamber/shroud.. That little mouse ended up destroying my engine which in turn, cost me a bunch of very valuable riding time and almost all of my cash flow (I was a very poor in $$ kid with big idea's of what was fun in life) because I had failed in taking the time to check my machine over carefully after taking it out of storage,, a mistake I learned from though.. That all said,, I think, regardless of what I was riding, in your case I would start by looking for mice nests in the exhaust pipes first thing - also check your air filters.. Another issue that pops into my mind would be to check the oil in the bike for gas contamination and also double check the coolant in the cooling system and make sure the system is functioning properly..

 

Right or wrong,, thats where this ol wannabe would be lookin..

Puc

Edited by cowpuc
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Hi Puc, thanks for responding to my querie. The model number on my 1996 Royal Star is listed as XVZ13A/13AT. I checked the exhausts, no mice in there. The rattling noise is coming from the engine itself, maybe the crank case (I don't really know). Here's a picture of my ride, I call him "Captain America" for obvious reasons.

Steve & 1996 Royal Star-2009.jpg

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Yep,, Captain America is definitely not a v-twin (GORGEOUS SCOOT STEVE!!) and is definitely a Yam V-4 - RSTD.. Knowing that,, I would suggest starting him up and double checking whether or not he is hitting on all 4 by spit checking or using a lazer temp checker to check the temp of the headers individually as he warms to see if he has a dead cylinder.. Maybe the odor you are smelling is raw fuel collecting in a pipe. You may have a fouled plug from over choking or some carb issues resulting from sitting..

OR,, does the odor smell like hot battery,, with an acidity odor? Did you by chance toss an ohm meter on the battery leads to test/check your stator/regulator condition when replacing the battery? Reason I ask is that, as with all charging systems, failure in this area is not uncommon. A failed diode can result in AC current being passed to the battery and/or over charging due to a faulty voltage regulator can fry a battery resulting in odd smells and destroyed battery..

Wish there was a way to pass smells over these computers cause being able to give those odors a sniff may help in diagnosing the CaptN's issues.. :thumbsup::big-grin-emoticon:

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