Prime almost killed my bike...

[mike_gs700e]

I had quite the scare yesterday when I attempted a trip to Hampton beach. The old 700 fired up like normal and I made it half a mile down the road (towards the gas station, which is relevant later) when I started loosing massive amounts of power. The bike just bogged down and died.

My first thought was "there is no way I am out of gas..." As I checked the petcock, I noticed that my air filters (1 per carb) were dripping with gas. Although it never happened before, I knew it was from leaving my petcock on prime. I have been running the bike on prime ever since the bike died on 89 North from lack of gas running through the On position. The next thing I noticed was my oil window was full. It turns out that half a gallon of gas leaked down through the carbs, down my cylinders, and into my oil.

I changed the oil, pulled the air filters and dried them out, and checked the spark plugs just to make sure they weren't fouled. I filled up the tank and she ran like new.

Luckily nothing exploded and I didn't do any internal damage.

The moral of the story is: don't leave your petcock on prime.

 

[seuadr]

I had quite the scare yesterday when I attempted a trip to Hampton beach. The old 700 fired up like normal and I made it half a mile down the road (towards the gas station, which is relevant later) when I started loosing massive amounts of power. The bike just bogged down and died.

My first thought was "there is no way I am out of gas..." As I checked the petcock, I noticed that my air filters (1 per carb) were dripping with gas. Although it never happened before, I knew it was from leaving my petcock on prime. I have been running the bike on prime ever since the bike died on 89 North from lack of gas running through the On position. The next thing I noticed was my oil window was full. It turns out that half a gallon of gas leaked down through the carbs, down my cylinders, and into my oil.

I changed the oil, pulled the air filters and dried them out, and checked the spark plugs just to make sure they weren't fouled. I filled up the tank and she ran like new.

Luckily nothing exploded and I didn't do any internal damage.

The moral of the story is: don't leave your petcock on prime.

and a very good moral. i had this problem as well a couple days ago after having the carbs off the bike i had to reprime them.. then left it on over night. i blew about 2 quarts of oil out the exhaust pipe. drained it, refilled it, life is good.

 

[Guest]

might still want to check your float seats. A bike shouldn't leak gas like that unless they're not working right.

Or, as a friend at work said, "the gas should evaporate faster than the gas leaks out."