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Electrical problems and fuel problems; could use some mercy from the Katana Gods!
First off...Hello!
I'm Stephen, I'm new here. I've been reading this forum night and day for a couple of months and I like what I see; very intelligent and helpful bunch! I'm wondering if you guys could help me out with a few things..
So, down to business.
The bike is an 04 Kat 600
I'm having electrical problems of which I'm fairly certain are being caused by bad grounds (which I read this bike is famous for) I hit the start button and it attempts to turn over but doesn't have enough oomph to do so and everything just goes dim. This happens intermittently and the problem was still occurring before I installed a new battery.
I'm fairly certain I could fix the ground problem if I had a suitable workspace but since I'm here at school I am limited to the parking lot and the tools I have in the trunk of my car (which is a standard 120pc kit w/ allen wrenches, sockets, wrenches, and screw driver with interchangeable bits. I also have a crescent wrench.) I would prefer to not pull the fairings off and risk losing screws, etc to trace the grounds myself in the parking lot here at school.
So, my first question:
Where (exactly) are the various ground terminations on this bike and what's a quick & dirty way to fix/improve them?
Second, I'm having fuel problems which are most likely related to things that are my fault...oops.
A couple of weeks after I bought the bike I noticed the fuel shut-off was on "ON" and not (what I thought was) "PRIMARY" so I switched it to PRI. Nearly every dirtbike/fourwheeler I've ever driven has Primary, Reserve, and Off on the fuel shut-off so I assumed this one was the same (except for the ON position which should have told me something was up from the beginning but of course my intuition was way better than everyone else's at the time). After that the bike started acting like it was flooded when starting, I looked into it and discovered PRI stands for PRIME...awesome. I switched it back to ON and the flooding symptoms cleared up a little but not much. It's now 3 tanks later and the "flooding" symptoms are completely back (needs full choke/throttle to start cold)and the RPM's hang a little when I let off the throttle. Makes the bike a pain the butt to drive.
Here's what I think happened:
It's getting colder here in Houston and I have been running fuel with ethanol in it. I read a few threads here about ethanol fuel in this bike and I feel I have many if not all of the symptoms of the ethanol gelling and screwing everything up. Especially since I had the fuel shut-off on PRIME for two days and it was cold outside so what I'm thinking is the fuel gelled in my carbs and is causing all of these problems.
So far I have tried seafoam. It's still in the current tank of gas and the condition seems to be getting worse as I use more of this tank. I bought a bottle of marine stabil ethanol treatment and regular stabil to try to combat this but have not put it in yet because I'm not sure about mixing seafoam and stabil.
What are your sentiments? Would be awesome to get this thing running good again!
Possibly Helpful Details:
I'm Stephen, I'm new here. I've been reading this forum night and day for a couple of months and I like what I see; very intelligent and helpful bunch! I'm wondering if you guys could help me out with a few things..
So, down to business.
The bike is an 04 Kat 600
I'm having electrical problems of which I'm fairly certain are being caused by bad grounds (which I read this bike is famous for) I hit the start button and it attempts to turn over but doesn't have enough oomph to do so and everything just goes dim. This happens intermittently and the problem was still occurring before I installed a new battery.
I'm fairly certain I could fix the ground problem if I had a suitable workspace but since I'm here at school I am limited to the parking lot and the tools I have in the trunk of my car (which is a standard 120pc kit w/ allen wrenches, sockets, wrenches, and screw driver with interchangeable bits. I also have a crescent wrench.) I would prefer to not pull the fairings off and risk losing screws, etc to trace the grounds myself in the parking lot here at school.
So, my first question:
Where (exactly) are the various ground terminations on this bike and what's a quick & dirty way to fix/improve them?
Second, I'm having fuel problems which are most likely related to things that are my fault...oops.
A couple of weeks after I bought the bike I noticed the fuel shut-off was on "ON" and not (what I thought was) "PRIMARY" so I switched it to PRI. Nearly every dirtbike/fourwheeler I've ever driven has Primary, Reserve, and Off on the fuel shut-off so I assumed this one was the same (except for the ON position which should have told me something was up from the beginning but of course my intuition was way better than everyone else's at the time). After that the bike started acting like it was flooded when starting, I looked into it and discovered PRI stands for PRIME...awesome. I switched it back to ON and the flooding symptoms cleared up a little but not much. It's now 3 tanks later and the "flooding" symptoms are completely back (needs full choke/throttle to start cold)and the RPM's hang a little when I let off the throttle. Makes the bike a pain the butt to drive.
Here's what I think happened:
It's getting colder here in Houston and I have been running fuel with ethanol in it. I read a few threads here about ethanol fuel in this bike and I feel I have many if not all of the symptoms of the ethanol gelling and screwing everything up. Especially since I had the fuel shut-off on PRIME for two days and it was cold outside so what I'm thinking is the fuel gelled in my carbs and is causing all of these problems.
So far I have tried seafoam. It's still in the current tank of gas and the condition seems to be getting worse as I use more of this tank. I bought a bottle of marine stabil ethanol treatment and regular stabil to try to combat this but have not put it in yet because I'm not sure about mixing seafoam and stabil.
What are your sentiments? Would be awesome to get this thing running good again!
Possibly Helpful Details:
- 2004 Katana 600, purchased ~1.5 months ago
- 19k miles
- The bike ran perfect when I bought it.
- I put premium in the tank
- I live on campus so the bike is primarily parked outside, uncovered. I do try to move it to the covered motorcycle parking before it rains; however, I missed it once because it started raining when I was in class.
- Previous owner claimed to have rebuilt carbs; didn't say anything about syncing them.
- Bike has a brand new battery (purchased/installed by me, not previous owner)
- I changed oil/filter shortly after purchasing the bike.
- I have a medium-high amount of experience working on cars, I do all of my own maintenance and I only set foot in an auto shop for tires/balancing/alignment.
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