Do I have an Engine Problem??

[dmoff1698]

First a little background...

 

 

I have a 99 RSV that has 125K miles. She is almost completely stock and I ride daily to and from work. A few years ago I decided to check my carb balance (I use a 4 guage set up) and noticed that #3 and #4 cylinder readings "danced" badly at idle. #1 and #2 were holding steady. By increasing the RPMs to around 1200-1300, #3 and #4 both smoothed out nicely, so I adjusted the balance there. It only needed minor tweeking to get all four cylinders to near perfection.

 

Since the bike has always run and pulled smoothly at all speeds and loads, I have continued to use this method since. This info may or may not have any bearing on my current problem.

 

Now to the problem:

 

My wife an I just returned from a two week, 2K mile trip around Colorado riding two-up pulling my Time Out camp trailer some of the time. Total trailer weight was around 350 pounds and around 15-20 pounds on the toung.

 

When I was fully loaded (wife and trailer) I found that I could hardly drive in 5th gear at all. Even on level ground at 65-70 MPH, any time I tried to accelerate or maintain speed on a slight hill, the engine would feel like it was missing severly. I'm talking here about a miss strong enough to shake the fairing until the speedo was almost unreadable and almost 0 acceleration. Back off the throttle or down shift into 4th and things were smooth again.

 

Park the trailer (still two-up) and things are back to normal. Smooth acceleration from 55 MPH in 5th with wide open throtle.

 

Now I realize that I am probably pushing the limit for a 1300cc bike with the load I had, but the severity of the vibration supprised me and I have never experienced it before in this bike.

 

This is the first time into the mountains with this trailer.

 

Thoughts I've come up with:

Weak spark plug blowing out under heavy load...had around 2500 miles on them when I left.

Porely adjusted valves running just on the edge....never been checked.

Just the nature of the beast...down shift and don't worry about it.

 

Any thoughts? Your experiences with heavy loads?

[1BigDog]

Im just going to be basic here. Im sure others will post with some deeper things to check out. My 99 ran sluggish when accellerating up a hill in 5th gear. I had to downshift to get any real push out of it. The carbs were synced too. Muffinman did a colortune to it and it ran great after that. Had power up hills too. 5th gear is an overdrive and these bikes do like to rev. Dropping down a gear when going up hill is not unreasonable. Since you have high mileage have you changed your fuel filter and ran seafoam in the tank? How is the spark from the coils. You could have a bad/intermittent coil. It is possible that your valves need adjustment also but I havent heard of anyone having it done recently. I have 62k on mine with no adjustments yet. Start with the basics and go from there.

[Scooter Bob]

Are you sure you're firing on all 4?? I've read on here about quite a few folks that had a bad coil, and didn't realize for a while.

 

Do a search here for coil problems and see if some of the symptoms match. Could be the coil starts working at the higher rpms after the downshift.

 

Just a thought, Scooter Bob

[RossKean]

Any chance your clutch is slipping under load giving a shuddering vibration and no acceleration? Does the engine speed up without yielding acceleration?

 

Otherwise plug or coil are possibilities. I would say fuel pump but wouldn't expect vibration.

 

Downshifting with heavy loads is probably a good idea.

 

Ross

[skydoc_17]

I would pull the fuel filter, cut it open and look for debree inside. If you find anything in that filter you could very well be looking at a new fuel pump. I have heard of more than one of the coils failing under heavy load,the check would be run it to duplicate the loss of power condition, as soon as possible pull over and check exhaust pipe temp. Now I use an infrared digital thermometer but you could just touch the exhaust pipes but I must warn: the good cylinders are gonna be hot as He!!. Don't hurt yourself doing this test. I would try fresh plugs and verify the condition of the spark plug wires. With all this being said, a few 2nd Gen Owners have gone to the VMAX final drive to elevate the RPMs while pulling a trailer. If running properly, even a 2nd Gen. should have Plenty of power to ride 2up and pull a trailer.

Hope this helps,

Earl

[BradT]

Mine did that as well when we were in Yellowstone heading to Fort Collins. I was riding solo pulling the trailer and man it was sluggish. Constantly down shifting to go up a small hill.

 

Since then I pulled a loaded piggybacker riding two up in Georgia, and had no problems, no need to down shift.

 

Still runs good and gets decent gas mileage, so I just figured it was the elevation.

 

Brad

[midnightventure]

In the mountains its just naturally not going to have as much power. At 125,00 miles it probably wouldn't hurt to have the valves checked and then recheck the carb synch.

[Freebird]

I had a similar problem when we went to the Colorado rally. It turned out to be a bad coil. Number 3 on my bike. Several others here have lost the number 3 coil also for whatever reason. V7Goose has been looking at the coils and has looked at a couple of bad ones and is thinking that the coils are possibly OK but it's corrosion in the plug cap that is causing the problem.

[BoomerCPO]

I would do a coil check. Lost my #3 coil last year and didn't even know it! I run high rev's on the scoot mostly and hardly ever get into 5th gear.

 

Amazing that these Ventures can run well on just 3 cylinders!

 

 

Boomer........who does not always run on all cylinders himself.

[Venturous Randy]

V7Goose has been looking at the coils and has looked at a couple of bad ones and is thinking that the coils are possibly OK but it's corrosion in the plug cap that is causing the problem.

 

I worked on a friend's 89 and found a dead cylinder was a corroded resister in the spark plug cap. If your caps have not been changed, it does not cost that much and would be a good place to start.

Randya