trouble with starting the gas gas

[60ratrod]

so the gas gas forum is of little help, like hardly anyone replies at all. anyway, i have managed to get this thing to start, run, ride and charge. however, it does not like to start without some assistance from either being jumped off of a charger or my truck(not running of course). the battery is brand new, and runs out of steam rather quickly when cranking, like something is taking more of the cca from the starter. is it possible the battery is weak from being in the cold on a maintainer or should i look into a relay mod, either coil or starter? or should i rip apart the starter and give it a good cleaning?

 

[JTGS850GL]

OK, I know this is going to sound stupid, but what the heck is a "gas gas"?

 

[Cipher]

jumpin jack flash?
no thats a gas gas gas

 

[Cipher]

check your ground
if it will start from a boost the battery is likely not good.
Plenty of charging systems die trying to maintain a battery thats past its service life.

 

[bonanzadave]

OK, I know this is going to sound stupid, but what the heck is a "gas gas"?

Inquiring minds want to know......had to look it up.

Gas Gas is a Spanishmotorcycle manufacturer, specialising in off-road motorbikes. Gas Gas are best known for their trials bikes, although they also make successful enduro and quad bikes.

Gas Gas emerged from the financial demise of Bultaco when two agents, Narc?s Casas and Josep Pibernat, found themselves with a shop but no product to sell. So they embarked on a programme to manufacture trials motorbikes for sale in their shop.


I know the Bultaco name. My friend, as a kid lusted for a Combat Wombat. But I dont see a bike like that in Mr 60ratrods signature.

The name Gas Gas literally means "to gas it" (to accelerate, give it the gas, turn the throttle - to go faster.) The Gas Gas founders have, at times, expressed misgivings about the chosen name inasmuch as that name causes confusion outside Spain. Others have joked that Gas Gas are so good that they had to name them twice. The slogan "Gas Gas = Fast Fast" was used by the US importer, Gas Gas North America, from 1999–2002 to try to help people understand the unique name.


or is it a pet name for your 109. If it were a real GASGAS trials bike I doubt it would have a battery.....

 

[60ratrod]

nope, the m109's name is caboose. i didn't add the 03 gas gas ec400 fse to my sig since it's mostly a fix-n-flip project that i got from my buddy who just had a baby back in september and is moving to virginia on orders in march for $200. you know what they say, naming something only makes it harder to get rid of(or eat-dad used to raise beef cattle). and gas gas for a time, and still kinda does, made enduros/dual sport bikes.

the battery is brand new as of october iirc, and is a 7-family agm battery. and i've only had this thing running really for trouble shooting, like trying to get it running, testing the charging system, and now to burn off what ever gas has built in the cylinder from trying to get it to cold start worth a damn. i did get the battery from a company called pacific power batteries, and was the best battery i've had in it. the other 3 were ghettozone duracrap gold batteries, and all 3 of them were junk. the battery that came with it was the first duracrap gold battery. maybe it's possible i need to get a 7-family battery that has more cca's?

 

[60ratrod]

Here's some photos of it:

Right after i got it before working on it:



And as it is today:

 

[60ratrod]

i confirmed the battery is good today. i took it off the bike and tender last night and left it sit inside on my plastic tool box over night and went back to pacific power batteries to have it tested. it had 12.76 resting vdc and 150 cca with their testers. so i yanked the cam cover and checked the valves, and only 1 intake was a little tight. not sure since i don't have a proper mm feeler gauge. it has .152 and .127 mm leaves, and the .127 goes in, but the .152 doesn't, so that shouldn't be too far out on ONE valve to cause a hard start on a 4 valve one lung motor. so i then went through EVERY starter connection minus the key and start button connections and cleaned them including the battery ground on the engine and applying dielectric grease, and it still cranks slow, but the choke function seems to be a lot better since it seemed to be back firing through the throttle body. any suggestions as to what else to look at? could it be bad gas since i don't know exactly how old the gas is that's in the tank?

 

[60ratrod]

i should probably mention the parts that have probably been needlessly shotgunned at this thing:

fuel pump relay-new
coil-new
crank sensor-new(it is fuel injected, the old one disconnected easy, probably not bad, needed for spark and fuel pump when cranking and running)
r/r-new(i found a blown charging system maxi fuse, may not have been bad)
spark plug-new(buddy pulled the old one and just stuffed the plug boot back in and didn't say anything about it)
air filter-new(kinda haphazardly stuffed in, no cage. gotta figure out what to do about that)
battery-new and totally required(screw duralast crap! lesson learned here)

 

[Steve]

You have a voltmeter? Of course you do. :-\\\

Check the voltage at the battery while you are trying to start the bike.

Also check the voltage at the coil while trying to start the bike.

Have you done anything to the carb? If the voltages are ok, and you say valve clearance is good, only thing left is the carb.
Since it has apparently started and run somewhat recently, it might just need a good cleaning, not a full rebuild.

.

 

[bonanzadave]

could it be bad gas since i don't know exactly how old the gas is that's in the tank?

I doubt bad gas would make it crank slow but that would have been one of the first things I would have done. Been burned by that toooo many times. Gas goes bad fast !

 

[60ratrod]

Steve- i actually hadn't thought about that. However, the coil uses a weather-pak style connector. Any ideas? I think i have a probe in storage for my meter, but it breaks through the insulation. Also, it's efi. If it was carb'd, i would have done the full monty on it. I'll look for diy injector cleaning.

Bonanzadave- I'm not blaming bad gas for the slow cranking. I'm blaming bad gas cause even when i boost the battery, it takes more cranking than it should to get this thing to want to live

 

[first timer]

Does it have a automatic compression release? On my honda 450, the compression is to high for the stater to spin the motor at full compression, so they built a centripetal release that bumps the exhaust valve a little bit to bleed off some pressure. Mine is adjustable, to much bump and not enough compression to fire it, to little compression then it won't spin. I would check your compression first and also valve clearances, these singles can eat valves quick which then leave a valve hanging open.

Thumpertalk is a pretty good place for bike advice.

 

[60ratrod]

first timer- I've checked the valves and they were all within spec iirc. I think it does have a decompressor because of a small port on the left side of the cylinder head, but I don't know what it would look like so I will have to look into the valvetrain breakdown exploded view that is in the manual that I have in the next few days. it does seem like it has a lot of compression making it bog the starter when starting from dead cold. that's something else I will look into. I will note that even trying to open the throttle more to try to blow out any build up of gas from cranking the motor over seems to make cranking the bike even harder, not easier, so it may all be in the decompressor like you suggested.

however, after chasing down and cleaning just about every connection in the starter circuit including the battery terminals and main battery ground, minus the ignition key and start switch on the right switch pod, the starting cycle seems much more lively. and by lively it doesn't spin any faster, just it seems to try to fire a bit better. so I think what I am going to do, aside from looking into the decompressor, is clean a lot of the other contacts that would play into the starting function, including removing the ecu and using contact cleaner on those connections.

so before I connect a meter to this bike again, these are the things I will look into as time after work and weather will allow. I really am starting to miss my garage. I'd love to leave working outside in the elements at work.

 

[60ratrod]

so after trying to research how to adjust the auto decompressor I found something interesting: the cam chain tensioners make the chain too tight and make it hard to start. and it seems that the decompressors were also prone to failure. I think i'll be looking into the drz manual chain tensioner, since that's what the suggested fix is. i'll also be looking at the decompressor since I'll have slack in the chain incase I need to replace the exhaust cam with the later model cam.

 

[first timer]

Double check your cam timing too. For a year my bike was hard starting (would spin forever but not want to fire) and after doing a valve check I discovered my cam timing (unicam) was retarded 1 tooth from TDC. It is easy to do on the unicam stuff cause you think you got it then you release the tentioner and it loads the cam chain and you find out if you picked the right tooth.

 

[60ratrod]

so an update:

because of working days-nights-days and going to different places on training detachments getting the squadron ready to go on deployment, I haven't touched it at all until this last week. so I ordered the manual cam tensioner as suggested by gasgasriders.org and thumpertalk and no improvement on the starting speed. so now I need to look into the starter, probably bad brushes. evidently the Honda hornet 600 brushes are the same part, so that will make getting them that much easier.

however, I did notice one thing that made me stop. the battery terminal connections, both positive and negative, get hot when I was trying to get this thing to start after installing the manual tensioner to get it adjusted. I don't think it's a corrosion issue, since I went through almost EVERY connection in the starting system, to include the main ground on the engine case. about the only corrosion I found is on the outside of the positive cable terminal where the cable terminal mates to the cable itself, but the wire isn't green, which is making me kinda rule it out, but not completely. and it looks like the cable terminals are made from steel, since the corrosion on the positive cable is rust.

 

[60ratrod]

with some cautious optimism

with some cautious optimism

i think i have this thing fixed!

so after some metering to see if i could find some voltage drops, i decided to yank the starter since i ordered some new brushes. i got it yanked apart, and man that thing was flippin gnarly! so i got the brush plate off, and of course i ordered the wrong brushes. so i decided to see how the brushes contacted the main motor, and there was still quite a bit of contact tension, so i decided to scrub the motor contact area and the brushes after cleaning all the nasty crud out of it. tossed it back in and there was still a slow crank. so i decided to say what the hell and tossed the charger back on it for about 7ish or so minutes. boy golly did it crank like it was supposed to. after i got it to fire off, i took the charger off and shut it down and it cranked right back up. so now i've got it back on the charger on the 2 amp cycle, and will try again after i get home tomorrow just to double verify that all the starter needed was a good cleaning. and what's a thread without some pretty pretty pitchers?