treybrad
New Member
Ok, I have a bit of an issue and figured I could use some more heads brainstorming causes. My NC has become hard to start, at seemingly random times -- I've not detected a pattern anyway. Sometimes it's first thing in the morning when it's 'cold' (it's June in TX, it only drops into the 70's at this point). Or today it was fussy when I started it after work, sitting in the 90°F heat.
Video from the other day, morning start up:
[video=youtube_share;0mcAmm-iMco]http://youtu.be/0mcAmm-iMco]NC700X Hard Starting - YouTube[/video]
A little twist of the throttle and it'll usually fire up. This happens maybe 40-50% of the time. Some mornings it starts immediately.
If I remember right, this started right about the time I finished my Iron Butt ride. Portions of that were into a nasty West Texas headwind, and I had the throttle literally pinned for a few hours at a time. I didn't think much of it really, this was standard procedure on my little WR250R and TW200 and neither seemed to mind a bit.
Thinking maybe all my WOT exploits fouled a plug or something, I replaced the spark plugs this weekend because they're easy to get to, and OCR found a cheap NGK substitute for the Iridium stock plugs. No change in the way it runs afterwards. It fired right up this morning, but gave me trouble this afternoon like I said. OEM plugs looked just fine (~23k miles) and still had proper gap.
My next thought is to check the valves again. I checked them at just shy of 20k miles and adjusted a couple to spec, but I'd be shocked if they moved in 3k miles. Valve noise is the same as always, I'd think if I didn't torque down an adjuster they'd loosen up very quickly and be noisy. Not sure what else I could screw up there.... My 10k and 20k inspections they've barely moved, and I only adjusted them to put them back to the middle of spec.
You can see the voltmeter on the dash, battery seems healthy to me. Maybe something with the fuel pump? I'm going to start 'priming' it twice and see if that helps -- ie, turn the run switch on, let it prime. And then cycle the run switch off and on again. Maybe the fuel pump is going, or the priming time is being cut short? Seems the same as it always has to me (you can hear it in the video).
So, any other ideas? It's been doing it for a few weeks now, quite a few tanks of gas have gone through it, so I don't think it's bad gas. Once it starts it runs great. I intentionally did quite a few full throttle, all the way to rev-limiter pulls today on the way home from work and it runs great. This is my daily commuter and weekend warrior, it doesn't sit for more than 48 hours, ever. Cruising around the hill country this weekend I got my best fuel mileage ever, 82.5 MPG. Previous best was ~75 MPG.
Does anyone know how the EFI choke/enricher works on these? It has never failed to start right away once the engine is fully warm, so maybe there's some temperature sensor that's out of whack? No CEL or anything (that'd be too easy ). This started in late April, about the time it stops getting cool here at all, or I'd try and see if it's consistently better or worse when cooler out.
Any help mucho appreciated.
trey
Video from the other day, morning start up:
[video=youtube_share;0mcAmm-iMco]http://youtu.be/0mcAmm-iMco]NC700X Hard Starting - YouTube[/video]
A little twist of the throttle and it'll usually fire up. This happens maybe 40-50% of the time. Some mornings it starts immediately.
If I remember right, this started right about the time I finished my Iron Butt ride. Portions of that were into a nasty West Texas headwind, and I had the throttle literally pinned for a few hours at a time. I didn't think much of it really, this was standard procedure on my little WR250R and TW200 and neither seemed to mind a bit.
Thinking maybe all my WOT exploits fouled a plug or something, I replaced the spark plugs this weekend because they're easy to get to, and OCR found a cheap NGK substitute for the Iridium stock plugs. No change in the way it runs afterwards. It fired right up this morning, but gave me trouble this afternoon like I said. OEM plugs looked just fine (~23k miles) and still had proper gap.
My next thought is to check the valves again. I checked them at just shy of 20k miles and adjusted a couple to spec, but I'd be shocked if they moved in 3k miles. Valve noise is the same as always, I'd think if I didn't torque down an adjuster they'd loosen up very quickly and be noisy. Not sure what else I could screw up there.... My 10k and 20k inspections they've barely moved, and I only adjusted them to put them back to the middle of spec.
You can see the voltmeter on the dash, battery seems healthy to me. Maybe something with the fuel pump? I'm going to start 'priming' it twice and see if that helps -- ie, turn the run switch on, let it prime. And then cycle the run switch off and on again. Maybe the fuel pump is going, or the priming time is being cut short? Seems the same as it always has to me (you can hear it in the video).
So, any other ideas? It's been doing it for a few weeks now, quite a few tanks of gas have gone through it, so I don't think it's bad gas. Once it starts it runs great. I intentionally did quite a few full throttle, all the way to rev-limiter pulls today on the way home from work and it runs great. This is my daily commuter and weekend warrior, it doesn't sit for more than 48 hours, ever. Cruising around the hill country this weekend I got my best fuel mileage ever, 82.5 MPG. Previous best was ~75 MPG.
Does anyone know how the EFI choke/enricher works on these? It has never failed to start right away once the engine is fully warm, so maybe there's some temperature sensor that's out of whack? No CEL or anything (that'd be too easy ). This started in late April, about the time it stops getting cool here at all, or I'd try and see if it's consistently better or worse when cooler out.
Any help mucho appreciated.
trey
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