Poorly bike

[Bordtea]

Hi all

Bought a Suzuki SV650 last week and fit my restrictor washers (goes between the carbs and the engine) last night and the bike was noticeably unhappy today. When fuel is in demand the bike struggles and gets very jerky, misfiring. It's accompanied by the fuel light periodically coming on and the speedo/revmeter going all over the place. Also the odometer seems to reset itself, as if you'd just turned the ignition on (loading screen). I also got thiss problem very slightly before i put the restrictors in but i just assumed i didnt have the choke on for long enough as it would sort itself out when the engine warmed up.

Get a slight whiff of petrol aswell sometimes bit not sure if this is abnormal or not.

Cheers

Edited by Bordtea on Thursday 26th April 20:52

[davepoth]

Sounds like an air leak; most likely you've not fitted the carb back on properly.

[Bordtea]

That was my first thought. Wasn't 100% sure that I fitted the airbox back on perfectly and again not sure 100% that I fitted the front carb perfectly, but it seemed ok. Why would an air leak cause the odemeter/speedo/revcounter to go mental though?

[Peter T]

Saying that you had the problem before you fitted the restrictors lead me to believe it was there before. It sounds like it is electrical that is causing your problem. Have you checked the battery to make sure that it is ok? ie 12-14 volts? Are the cables leading to the battery ok and tight and not corroded? Check to see if the earthing from the battery to the frame is good and tight and free from corrosion.

[Bordtea]

Peter T said:

Saying that you had the problem before you fitted the restrictors lead me to believe it was there before. It sounds like it is electrical that is causing your problem. Have you checked the battery to make sure that it is ok? ie 12-14 volts? Are the cables leading to the battery ok and tight and not corroded? Check to see if the earthing from the battery to the frame is good and tight and free from corrosion.

Thanks for the reply. The problem was there before but very slightly. Only happened for the first couple of minutes or so from cold (and not every ride by any means), once the engine warmed up it seemed to be fine. It got significantly worse overnight last night after fitting the restrictors which does lead me to believe it's something that I've done/interfered with, but tbh I have no idea. Haven't checked the battery as of yet but I'll do that tommorow as that seems fairly sensible.

Also it seems ok when at idle, but manifests itself almost as soon as I set off :/

Cheers!

[Mr2Mike]

Almost certainly a wiring fault, and disturbing the wiring loom whilst fitting the restrictions has made it worse. I presume this is a 99-02 bike?

My dad has an '02 SV650S that suffered from electrical problems and I found the main wiring loom was absolutely rotted just at the point it passed under the back of the tank. Several of the wires had suffered water ingress at the point where they were joined internally within the loom and the copper was quite literally crumbling.

[Bordtea]

Mr2Mike said:

Almost certainly a wiring fault, and disturbing the wiring loom whilst fitting the restrictions has made it worse. I presume this is a 99-02 bike?

My dad has an '02 SV650S that suffered from electrical problems and I found the main wiring loom was absolutely rotted just at the point it passed under the back of the tank. Several of the wires had suffered water ingress at the point where they were joined internally within the loom and the copper was quite literally crumbling.

Bloody hell haha yeh it's an 02 reg... i'm gonna do some prodding about today as the problem only happens when moving.. gonna try moving some wires and see if it does anything.

[tinker-27]

Have a look where the wire go by the rear subframe , and all the multi plugs

[Bordtea]

Thanks for replies all. Had another play around today basically took off the airbox and the carbs again and this time made sure 100% that they were seated correctly. Did all that then took the bike onto the drive to go test ride it, turned the key to 'on' and nothing happened, no lights on the dash or anything. Tried the ignition switch and nothing again... f**k.

On closer inspection when I turned the key to 'on' the neutral/oil/petrol light would flicker like 2-3 times then go off again, and with this was a ticking sound coming from the battery area.

Took the bike back into the garage, seat off, fuse tray off and then I thought I'd try the ignition again and this time it worked fine?? Took the battery out anyway and tested for voltage came out as 12.9 volts which seemed ok... cleaned up the terminals when I put it back in and put the fuse tray back on etc and it still lit up the dash etc. Then decided at this point to try testing the bike so took it round the block and it works fine.

Leads me to believe that it is definitely an electrical fault that's obviously intermittant, but now that it's working I can't really find the problem so I'll just have to wait for it to start playing up again. Did notice that the positive terminal on the battery was a bit loose when I took it off but I highly doubt this was the issue.

[Mr2Mike]

The wiring loom was damaged internally on my dads bike, you couldn't see anything wrong with it until the outside of the loom was stripped off to expose all the wires.

[tinker-27]

Take the loom of and find the fault as you don't want a power loss mid corner or pulling out of a junction , I've done a few with the subframe rubbing through the harness