RCinNC
Well-Known Member
That's why I was curious about the actual compression reading on the cylinders during one of these type of events. It would at least tend to prove or disprove that particular theory about why a hard start was occurring. Though that still wouldn't solve the question of why the engine was flooding in the first place. There doesn't seem to be a uniform series of circumstances that result in the condition, and two bikes operated under the same exact conditions might not share the same result. Some get bigger batteries and say the issue never occurred again. Some, like me, use an aftermarket battery that is actually less powerful than the Yuasa 14S and has never had an issue. Some guys never worry about quick on and off cycles with the engine and never have an issue, some of us are rigid about letting the bike warm up before we shut it off. And 50 pages of the hard start thread, while anecdotally informative, doesn't shed any evidence on why it occurs; understandably, no one is following the scientific method in trying to diagnose the cause of the problem. Guys just want to get their bikes running again. I follow my particular ritual and haven't had it happen, but it doesn't really prove anything, since other guys don’t follow my procedure and haven’t had the issue occur either.
“Hard Start” might not even be a well defined, singular phenomenon, but a bunch of different events that get lumped under “hard start”. Shame on me for my lack of reading comprehension, because I didn’t even zero in on the part of jackintherok’s post where he said the bike sat for three months in extremely cold conditions with the same gas in the tank. I didn’t even consider that those are the perfect conditions for fuel separation, and the “hard start” solution would be virtually useless to resolve that. I still would have tried the hard start solution, because it's always good to start troubleshooting with the least labor intensive step before going on to more extensive stuff, but if I'd paid more attention while I was reading, I might have been quicker to suggest "bad gas" as a potential problem.
“Hard Start” might not even be a well defined, singular phenomenon, but a bunch of different events that get lumped under “hard start”. Shame on me for my lack of reading comprehension, because I didn’t even zero in on the part of jackintherok’s post where he said the bike sat for three months in extremely cold conditions with the same gas in the tank. I didn’t even consider that those are the perfect conditions for fuel separation, and the “hard start” solution would be virtually useless to resolve that. I still would have tried the hard start solution, because it's always good to start troubleshooting with the least labor intensive step before going on to more extensive stuff, but if I'd paid more attention while I was reading, I might have been quicker to suggest "bad gas" as a potential problem.