This month has been littered with moron type actions on my part. I know I am not alone, but I think I take the cake. After poking fun at me, feel free to share your tail of a moron.
I changed the oil in my 550 a couple weeks ago. After putting about 50 miles on it I was rummaging around in my garage and noticed the empty oil bottle. It was for 2 stroke motorcycle oil!
What a moron.
I drained the oil right away and picked up the correct oil and replaced the oil filter. I figured I would ride it for a couple hundred miles and replace the oil again.
Then (yes, it gets better) I was gassing up a few days later and spilled gas on my bike.
The gas looked like a waterfall as it poured all over the tank. I cleaned up the gas as I indulged in a festival of cussing.
So I think the bad can't get worse, I was wrong. My bike got loud and lost a lot of power. WTF now? So I am looking over everything and I remember someone on the board talking about the symptoms of their bike when one of their plugs was not firing. Sure enough, one of the plugs was gunked up and.......smelled like gas. So then it hits me. When I spilled the gas some must have pooled up in the hole that the first plug goes into. So I replace the plug and whaaa la, we are back on the road.
All of this brings me to yesterday. I rode my bike out to the Anti Al-Qeada BBQ which is about 45 minutes away. Check the bike over real well as this was to be my first time going any long distance and my first time on the freeway.
Half way there the bike just stalls. I pull over thinking the worse and it turned out to be that I closed the choke all the way. Wheew, that was scary.
Everything else went fine until the ride home. First I start to loose throttle response, then she dies. I check the choke, then the gas, the fuel line/filter, then the oil. She was a bit low, but nothing that should have caused her to stall. I fire her back up and she sounded fine. So I ride another 5 minutes or so and now she got loud, real loud! Loss of power, poor throttle response, could the plugs be gunked up again. So I pull off into a parking lot and call for a plug wrench, wire brush, and some oil. I waited about an hour and a half for my sister to show up.
I put in some oil, and checked the plug. The plug looked fine.
At this point I am really getting scared because I wouldn't be able to get a truck or trailer out to this parking lot until Wed. So I try to start her again and she sounded great. As I am riding I begin to wonder if it was the oil and she stalls again.
So I start from square one. I check the gas, and I was empty!
Turns out there is a ring in the tank that I though was where the gas line was. It was rather dark on the side of the road and I though the tank was half full.
So I put the petcock onto reserve and rode over to the closest gas station. She purred the rest of the way home.
This is the third time I have been trouble shooting and over looked the obvious. From here on out, I triple check the gas first!
