Comments on: Day49-From Chile with Love!, Feb 14, 2011

By: chuck hickey

chuck hickey — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 18:34:39 +0000

Having nothing useful to say —– I’ll just go with
Hope it works out — the Credit card as well as the bikes (which may end up being part and parcel.

sending some karma your direction.

By: Brian R.

Brian R. — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 07:07:45 +0000

By the way Dean – that is the prefilter (in your picture), not the filter. Does not really matter if you did the psi test on it – that proves it is doing what it needs to do.

By: Brian R.

Brian R. — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 07:06:03 +0000

What JH said. TPS could be it if high speed butterflies are not kicking in. Lisa; BS on the chain tightening, but if it works for you who cares what I think!

Wow – Credit Card issues, whew, this is just not supposed to be part of adventure touring….. Kinda goes beyond the “fun of new experiences” in my book. I do have to say, I’ve had these problems before but with my BofA card they were really great and on top of it before any real damage was done. THen again, 100 miles from home is not 10,000 miles.

By: H Marc Lewis

H Marc Lewis — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 00:32:44 +0000

This is a wild guess (but it happened to me once so I’ll mention it) but is there some external object that could be blocking the air intake when the bike gets up to speed? In my case, it was the owner’s manual on a brand new ’66 Suzuki X-6 Hustler (because the air intake was behind the side cover).

By: Chris W

Chris W — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 23:19:46 +0000

Dean, I imagine you’ve already replaced the spark plugs, but I’ve had similar problems but at lower RPM’s.

The TPS sounds like it could be the problem. The 4100 RPM’s, is that on a flat surface? Is it the same going uphill, downhill? I read that you are able to rev it to 5K at a stop without experiencing the issue, but at a stop could the same throttle position actually be at 7 or 8 grand when there is no load on the engine?

By: John Heiney

John Heiney — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 15:54:58 +0000

Hi Dean,

I don’t know electronic motorcycles, but I can tell you that 3 bar is about 45 psi.

Upward wishes,

John Heiney

By: Tom Botz

Tom Botz — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 14:15:42 +0000

I hope you get it fixed, but:
Since every day counts when you’re down there and since you can do 70 mph no problem, you may end up riding it the way it is and hope it doesn’t get worse. It wouldn’t be the end of the world. I rode from Mendoza to Ushuaia with a badly-slipping clutch and it was ok – - just added another element to the adventure. It seems there is always SOMETHING wrong with the bikes. Good luck. By the way Dean, there is nothing wrong with a little sightseeing and relaxing!

By: Gary Buch

Gary Buch — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 12:52:14 +0000

for lisa. call the credit card company and tell whoever in india answers that you want to speak to an american. i’m told this works. good luck. i just had my card numbers lifted. it’s a royal pain in the ass. gary

By: John H

John H — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 12:42:32 +0000

Wow, sorry to hear about the “issues” that y’all are having to deal with right now. Hoping you can get back on the road and enjoying the riding part of the trip again today.

You mentioned that the butterflies won’t open all the way. Has that been confirmed? Could be a TPS (throttle position sensor) problem, but I don’t think that is very likely.

Hard to diagnois things long distance and I know you have Strom experts like BR working all the angles, but when you disconnected the Power Commander, did you also disconnect the battery to remove power from the ECU and let it reset? I think I would at least try that in case the PC caused a change in the standard ECU settings. Sometimes pulling the power to let the ECU it reset itself will help. It’s a longshot, but it does not cost anything to try. Obviously, if they disconnected the battery to work on the bike and it still would not rev up when you tested it, this is not the issue.

I just have to add a comment about their explanation of needing to adjust a 650 chain from the slack in the top run instead of the bottom run. Really? That is just total BS. If you put the bike in gear and pull one run of the chain tight, the other run will have the same amount of slack as it will if you did it the other way. Doh!

The upside is that if the 4100 RPM issue can’t be corrected in the time remaining, LL could opt to slow down on the GirlieStrom and allow JC/NB to keep up at 60mph on the ManlyStrom. Y’all can still get to the destination, just not quite as fast.
:)
Here’s hoping that y’all get everything fixed and are back to the adventure ASAP!