engine shuts down

[thumper1]

about a half dozen times in the last few months, my 97 rstd has just shut down after about 1/2 mile. i pulled over opened the gas cap , thinking maybe a gas cap venting problem but i don't know. the bike starts back up and runs fine afterward. i was thinking gas cap vent problem or maybe ignition switch short but not sure. any ideas would be appriciated.

thanks, thumper1

[Squidley]

When you pull the cap off is it difficult to pry it off the tank and sound like a vaccume seal when pull it off? If so then you have a vent problem with the cap, not an uncommon problem, I have had it happen to me several times.

[thumper1]

the gas cap doesn't seem to have any vacuum or problem coming off but i will check closer, seems to happen after sitting for an hour or so on hot days

[pegscraper]

Try riding with the cap off and see what happens. Also realize that in the process of pulling the cap off and then restarting the engine, all of which involves movement of the key, you wiggled the ignition switch. These ignition switches are known for being flaky. Next time it happens, try to restart it without touching anything. If it won't start, try just wiggling the key a little. Don't even turn it off and back on, just wiggle it and see what happens. You should be able to nail it down pretty easily.

[ediddy]

I had a similar problem. Bike would die while riding and then after a few minutes would re start. One day it wouldn't start at all. I noticed that when I switched my bike on I didn't hear the fuel pump run. Took it to the dealer and the fuel pump was bad. The mechanic said he could tap the fuel pump and it would begin to run. It was replaced under warranty.

[jburrell]

Does the switch seem to work? I had a similar issue with my bike. I would go down the road and it would just quit or I would stop somewhere and it would not turn on. I would turn the key but nothng turned on. No speedo, no fule gage, the fule pump would not sping up etc. This happened several times. If this is what you are seeing it is common with the switches. There is a workaround for it howerver.There is a entry on this site about repairing and replacing the switch as well as the work around. In my case I took my seat and tank off. Under the tack you will see 2 sets of wires going to the switch. As the doc says you can tap into the left set of wires (check doc for which wires this is). I took some wire and connected to these 2 wires just behind where they went into the coupling and ran both wires to just behind my battery and added a switch there. Now without the key I can use this switch to turn on my engine and everything works as its supposed to. Use this as an aux switch only. I have not had a re-occurence of my issue but I did test it out before I set it up. For a quick test unhook the connector--then run a jumper across the 2 wires but inserting one end on your wire in one hole and then the other hole (female side of connector). YOU will see the speedo etc start to work. Now with this setup you can just use this if you system shuts down due to the switch. I have mind directly under my seat directly behind the battery and I can reach down and deploy it if needed. It appears that the switches get hot and decide to quit ocassionally.

 

Here is freebirds post on how to fix

http://www.venturerider.org/forum/showthread.php?t=512

[sgraddy]

I had that happen multiple times. I really had a hard time diagnosing the problem till one day I hit a very hard chuck hole in the road and the engine cut out for about 1 second. When I go home and put the bike on the rack, put it in gear and started tapping around, I could make it fails when I tapped the kickstand switch. Once I bypassed it, I have never had the problem again. That has been over 24,000 miles or two bikeweeks ago!

[sarges46]

Mine was loose battery connections!

 

It would go and then it wouldnt...then it would go again. Good thing I trouble shooted before parking it were it died.