Help! My '82 GS450T won't start

[JessVee]

Funny Story...I purchased my first bike last week. A 1982 GS450T. I took it out this afternoon for my maiden voyage. Literally, this is the first time I'm taking a bike out on the road. I'm a new rider, and won't lie- I know nothing about bikes and I'm wanting to learn.

My first stop sign, I down shift from third. Stop with the clutch held in and I stall. Traffic starts building up behind me, I try to turn the engine back on and it won't. I try a few more times and it finally starts back up, running at 4PMS, it doesn't sound right so I kill the engine and push it around the corner out of traffic.

I try turning it on again and it won't. I finally get it to start, it revs really high, backfires and the engine shuts off. After that I try a few more times and the engine just won't turn over.

I think I flooded my engine at this point, right? I just don't know why 1) it stalled when I stopped. and 2) it was revving so high when I did get it to start again. Please tell me if I did anything wrong, I am trying to learn! And please tell me I didn't kill my bike on my first ride.

Thanks for any comments.

[Nessism]

Is there gas in it? Do you know how to work the reserve system?

[cowboyup3371]

Please please get yourself into your local Motorcycle Safety Foundation approved course quickly. You'll learn more than you know about how to safely operate your bike.

It likely stalled because you were in too high of a gear. I've found with my 550 I really need to be down in first or second if coming to a sudden stop otherwise my bike will die out on me.

With that said, you need to go through the Top Newbie Mistakes thread in Nessism's signature block there and really read up on the stuff Basscliff will give you later in the mega-welcome.

[Guest]

Welcome to the forum and good choice in bikes!

However, as said earlier, you definitely need to get some maintenance done... these old bikes typically will have old stale fuel blocking critical carb circuits and the rubber on the air intakes is probably old and hard and not sealing either.

I really recommend knocking off all those critical maintenance tasks first as well as getting some edumacation on riding techniques...

Go stick a hello thread in the GS Ownerss forum so BassCliff can give you your mega welcome too.

[JessVee]

Thanks everyone for the comments and the welcome. I'll definitely post in the hello thread.

Cowboyup: thanks for the down shifting tip, good to know what happened to me wasn't out of the ordinary.

This experience has been an eye opener, I still have a lot to learn. I took an MSF course back in March but I think I lost a lot of skills I picked up. I was actually on my way to a high school to practice when this incident happened. Need some more time just freshening up on the basics!