Last weekend I took my 750 out on a trip to Memphis with some friends. They were riding a cb450, cb500t & kz400. Another friend was on a custom-built Harley. All bikes were running great & the weather couldn't have been nicer. About 2/3 of the way there, having never really opened it up all the way, I decided to see what my 750 can do. A 4-lane country highway, no traffic in either direction & flat - perfect. Once I hit about 95mph, I noticed that if I let off the throttle a bit, it didn’t slow the engine. Yikes.
Some background: the PO had installed right-hand controls that had a pull cable only, no push cable. Also the kill switch is inoperable. Both of these things were on my list to fix, just hadn’t gotten to them yet.
So here I am, screaming down the road and unable to slow down. I know I’ve gotta kill the engine using the key, and I know I’ve gotta pull the clutch at pretty much the same time to keep the back wheel from locking up or otherwise getting all wonky on me. Deep breath, pull the clutch with my left hand, turn the key with my right.
Didn’t time it exactly right. When I pulled the clutch, of course the RPM’s shot up like a rocket. I wasn’t looking, but I’m betting 11k+ easy. There’s a loud backfire and some smoke, but as I coast to the side of the road I’m thankful just to be safe. I thought that I’d busted a throttle cable or something, but it turns out that I had just pulled it too open and it had stuck there. It returned to closed when I pushed on the throttle stop.
I waited a while, then fired it up and was surprised that it started pretty easily. As I pulled away though, I immediately recognized that I was running on only three cylinders, and there was a tapping sound coming from my engine. My friends were all nice enough to ride with me the 30+ miles into the next little town @ 45 mph the whole way, with that sound in my engine getting louder and louder. I kept the RPM’s under 3k hoping to minimize the damage. Stayed the night at a hotel in Crump, TN (if you’re ever stuck there, check out the local watering hole Big Daddy’s for some cheap booze) and when I fired it up the next morning it was basically running on two cylinders and sounded horrible. I’m thinking I at least bent a valve when it redlined, but between then and getting to town it looks like I pretty much f’d up another cylinder in some capacity as well.
Lessons learned:
1. Kill switches are important
2. There’s a reason why stock 750’s come with a pull AND a push cable on the throttle
3. No hot-doggin’ when you haven’t already gone through all of your bike, and especially 100+ miles away from home
4. If this ever happens again, slow down as much as possible using the brakes before attempting the kill/clutch maneuver
