Bonneville America Forums Forums Technical Forums General Tech bogging

i was riding my bike home the other day, and got caught i a big rain strom the other day, i was swamped my bike was kicking along pretty good then started to sputter and just was not responding to the throttle, it finally died so i coast to the side of the road and tried to crank it nothing i pulled the choke it fired up so i took off it finially cleared and ran good. about five miles it started to do this again and finially die,so i pulled the choke and it fired up and sputtered then took off good and i made it home. i let it sit over the weekend and went the otherday and put new plugs in it to the corner store about 2 miles from my house she fired right up and took of great running smooth then it started ti stumble and sputter then died i pulled off the road and fired it up i had to pull the choke to get it to run it sputtered and then cleared up for a minute and went right back to sputtering. i wonder if my air filters or carbs may have some water in them i am going home today and getting a couple if gallons of gas for another place, i have a feeling the last place i got gas has something to do with it.

Sure sounds like water in the gas to me. Or...hopefully not - a bad CDI box. Matt's would always run great until the bike was soaked, then he would have to wait several hours for it to dry before it would fire again.

May be the fuel vent line or tipover valve is getting plugged. Several folks have had the vent line get water in it and stop the venting, which then stops the flow of gas to the carbs. Quick temporary fix is to loosen or remove the gas cap.

After the cap is removed, you can also see a vertical hollow metal tube sticking up about an inch or more. This is the fuel vent line, and a hose connects to the bottom of it under the tank and that proceeds to the fuel tipover shutoff valve. Below that is another tube leading below the bike.

If you cut that bottom tube at approximately a 45 degree angle at the bottom of it, then the rain water cannot plug the vent tube.

You can check the system by blowing into the metal pipe under the gas cap using a separate spare length of tubing). It should blow thru easily, if not then it was plugged, and just blow harder to unplug the vent line/tipover valve.

There have been previous posts about this somewhere.

Do you have the Freak or have you modified the airbox?

If I don't put my water resistance covers on my K&Ns (no airbox) in a rainstorm it will bog down as it sucks in water. It seems to "clear out" if I run at higher rpms.

Thats funny I have never had any problem even in driving rain I don't get any bogging from the Freak.

Chances are good that the rain was blowing up under the tank and soaking the electrical connections. In the time required to try to restart the engine, then pull the choke and do it again, heat from the engine dried it out enough to run. If you get some dielectric grease from the local autoparts or electronics store and pack all the connections under the tank with it, your problem will go away.

thanks for all the input, i am still working on getting some pictures posted, wife is out of town and been doing alot of running 6 and 8 year olds and work and also keeping up with the 19 year old son how knows everything!!!!!!!