AGH! HELP!
 

So the most dreaded thing happened yday morning when i woke up...

planned to go for a little morning ride, pump some gas, come home and get ready to head back to la for finals. opened up the garage, rolled out the good ol hawk, turned ignition to on, checked neutral and killswitch...

*crank crank crank crank crank* wtf? am i out of gas? so i sat on the bike leaned it back and forth *swish swish* hm still go fuel...

double checked the choke, it was fine. so im like hm wtf? starter does sound like its getting weaker with cranks, so i busted out the drip charger. did 6 hours that day, came back tried again. nothing. did another 8 hours today, came back, nothing. even added an extra gallon of fuel just incase.

being the motorcycling newbie that i am, im freakin stumped. seems like a spark problem since i can hear the engine barely start to fire up, but not catch, it even backfires/pops here and there depending if i gave the throttle a pump before starting.


PLEASE HELP! I WANT TO RIDE MY HAWK AGAIN ASAP!!!!

Four strokes don't need to have the throttle twisted before/during start up. If you pulled the choke all the way, you should be good to go. Chances are, you wet fouled a/both plugs. Start check; Power - Compression - fuel - ignition. Your engine won't start unless you have all of these. Pull the front cylinder plug and see what it looks like. Contact cleaner will do the job of cleaning it off, but beware, once a plug is fouled it is easier to become fouled again. Best to replace them if they are fouled. Good luck!

UPDATE!

so i woke up this morning bright and early and was like ($*)@(*#$)(@#! i wanna ride! (local dealer was unveiling duc 848 *drool*) so i ran out to the garage to see if i could get her to warm up...

same shit as last night -_-.

but, since i could tell that it wanted to start, i tried giving it throttle when it sounded like it was about to start and SUCCESS. decided to run a check as to why it would start even with full choke.

seems like my choke nob isnt working 100%. when the engine was running, made sure there was no choke, then gradually pulled the choke out to see how the rpms would react.

full choke ended up only giving me around 2-2.5k rpm, i remember it used to be higher than that. and like about 75% of the way out on the knob, rpms cease to react. im guessing something with my choke mechanism is loose. any suggestions as to how to remedy this?

(btw the bike runs purrrrdy as usual, even had enough time to run out to the showroom, although, didn't have enough time to wait inline behind 10 ppl to test ride the new 848 :(, perhaps next time. i'll post pics asap)

thanks!

Choke adjustment is a common problem. 2-2.5k for idle at full choke is plenty though.

BTW, most trickle chargers don't actually re-charge batteries, they just keep full ones full.

good to know re: the choke.

the charger is actually a car battery charger, one of those ones that are adjustable between 2, 10 and 50 amps. i used the 2 amp setting.