Friday, September 23, 2011

9/23/11 Waterlogged

The SV650 is a great bike. It's versatile, reliable, cheap to buy and cheap to run. It has one HUGE weakness though: water. More specifically, rain.

Lately my bike has been less and less tolerant of rain. Usually this means it turns itself into the dreaded SV325. An SV325 is and SV650 that is running on one of its two cylinders. This problem is fairly common, hence the name. This is usually caused by water getting into the deep spark plug socket of the front cylinder and drowning the connection to the front plug. Up until a month ago, I could just ride it until the water dried up and then my bike would come back to life again, like coughing out a cold.

Recently, it has been slow to come back to life. I figured I had run it on one cylinder too long and fouled the front plug, so I removed it. Looking at the plug, there was certainly grime on it, but it wasn't typical engine grime, it was to dry and dusty looking. Shining the flashlight into the plug hole I saw this.

Apparently the front wheel had kicked up a substantial amount of road grit up into the front cylinder. There is a drain hole down there for the water and grit to drain out, but it must have clogged. Because I had inevitably gotten grit and grime into the front cylinder by removing the plug, I took a step back and thought about how I was going to fix this without damaging my engine.

The next day, I made an extension for the shopvac out of a vaccum hose and very successfully removed all visible grit. I then cranked the engine for a while with the plug out and the vacuum running in an attempt to get anything that had fallen into the cylinder.

Satisfied that I had done all that could be done, I put the bike back together and started it up, hoping for all to be well.

But it wasn't.

It ran on one cylinder still, for a while, then on two, but poorly. The bike barely idled, and when revved it would die. I lifted the front of the tank to see that the carbs looked ok, and after about 30 seconds, it started to run well again.

Convinced that it just had to clear its throat, I dropped the tank back down, and started to get ready to test it out....when it started running like shit again. Then the gears started turning in my head. It ran well with the tank up, which raised the sump of the tank. Sounds like water might be in the tank.

I opened the gas cap, and the little hole that water is supposed to drain through was, again, clogged with grime. This causes the water to pool around the cap seal and find its way into the tank.

I cleared the drain, then pulled the tank so I could drain it, and sure enough there was a ton of water in there. you can see the denser, clearer water sitting at the bottom of this bottle. Before dumping the tank, I drained about half a liter of water from it.

I haven't put everything back together yet, but I am confident that the problem will FINALLY be solved.

Fingers crossed




-W.W. SBSS


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