The Joy Of A Well-Running Motorcycle
The Concours ran well on this trip and has continued to run well–finally!
I had forgotten to mention one thing about our recent OFMC trip: all of a sudden my Concours decided to run well again.
I had been having a series of problems with this bike. I didn’t know how long this had been going on till just now when I looked back on times I’ve written about these problems. The first mention I encountered was from December 28, 2020. Almost two years. Dang.
At that time I told how I had rolled the bike out for a ride, fired it up and let it warm up, and then took off, only to have it die about 10 feet out of the driveway. It seemed to be acting the way it had in the past when I had inadvertently left the gas petcock on Prime rather then in the On or Reserve positions. Why this thing even has Prime I don’t understand. So I did what had worked in the past, I changed the oil. After that it ran fine and I thought I had solved the problem.
Not so easy. The next few times I rode it it wouldn’t run well at first and I would ride around the neighborhood before just to see before going further from home. It would die coming to a stop so I’d rev it a bit as I stopped.
I did some searching and found information suggesting maybe the air filter was clogged with oil, so I replaced the oil filter. No improvement so I checked on the Concours Owners Group forum and came up with the possibility of hydrolock. But as far as I could tell that was not the issue either so finally I resigned myself to calling in Joel, my mechanic, and paying the price.
But then I met a guy who suggested clearing the fuel line using carb cleaner. I did that and it helped a lot. Maybe I wouldn’t need to pay Joel after all. The immediate improvement was great and I hoped it would just get better and better. But it didn’t. Eventually I did have Joel clean the carburetors. By now it was April of 2021.
Come July of 2021 I went on the OFMC trip on the Concours after Joel had cleaned the carbs and the bike ran well but not perfectly. And at times it seemed like the throttle would stick and the engine would race like crazy at a stop and there was nothing I could do. Arrgh!
After that trip I had Joel work on it some more and it finally was good enough and I figured I’d just have to live with revving it a bit until it got fully warmed up, and accepting that it had a delayed response to twisting the throttle. Not great but livable. And that’s where matters rested as of October 2021 and all through 2022.
Until the day before this year’s OFMC trip. I was getting ready to leave and figured I should take the bike for a spin just to make sure it was operating well before I took off and miraculously it didn’t run OK, it ran great! It ran the best it had run in two years. No long warm-up needed, no delayed throttle response, none of that.
And then the next day and on the whole trip and every time I’ve ridden it since then it has run like a new bike again. The impression I get is that for a long time there was some blockage in the fuel line and all of a sudden, finally, it got cleared out all on its own. I’m so happy! It’s just night and day how much better it runs. FINALLY!!
Biker Quote for Today
The best invention after the wheel was putting two of them together.
Tags: kawasaki concours
