Stuck Choke -> Engine Turnover issues

[virati]

Hi all! Love my gz250 so much that a few days without riding it is enough to get me cranky. Unfortunately, I'm cranky...

A few days ago doing my normal startup routine in the morning (still cold in the mornings here in Texas), involving cranking the choke to about 3/4 and then starting it. No problems. When i try to close the choke back to normal, lo and behold, nothing happens. Obviously I knew something was wrong but I had to be somewhere very fast. I went ahead and started towards school and my bike died at an intersection. I waited about 10-20 minutes and started it again, keeping my rpms low. That got me to where i needed to go. On my way back home later that day it died twice, with me having to push it for the last quarter mile.

The spring at the carberateur end wasn't enough to overcome whatever junk was resisting the cable so today I take the cable out, worked out the rust/junk and it seems to be back to normal (used hondalube). Unfortunately, I can't get it to start. I figure I've flooded the engine but it's been sitting there for quite some time but hasn't resolved itself.

I did manage to get it going for 20-30 seconds before it died again. This was after 5-6 failed attempts today. And now, it won't start again. Not the battery, I checked the charge.

I figure I must have really flooded the engine. What exactly are my options at this point?

[alanmcorcoran]

Hey virati,

The other guys are gonna jump all over me, but, what the hey.

Is it cranking good? If yes, move on, if no, read threads on push starting/battery chargers/tenders.
Is your plug fouled? This is very easy to check. If you have been riding with the choke stuck on for a long time, it might be fouled, not sure this is really it, though.
Is you idle set too low? Probably can't really check this now, but when you do get it started and fully warmed up, something to look at.
If you really did flood it, the gas should evaporate (which, unfortunately, fouls the plug some more) in less than an hour.

If the next time you try it, if it doesn't start, pull out the plug and see if it is wet with gas. Then at least you know you are getting fuel. Your problem then might be a low spark, short or otherwise bad plug.

If the plug is dry and clean, you may have crap in your carb blocking the fuel or crap in your gas tank blocking the fuel. Other threads on here address both of those.

Typically if it won't start it's either air, spark or gas that is the problem. It doesn't sound like you have an air problem, but it's real easy to check the air box, filter and drain plug. I'd do that last.

I'm betting it's your plug or carb.

Don't light the spark plug hole with a lighter. Everyone will yell at you.

[JWR]

Good answers alanmcorcoran.

A real rule of thumb here: Always start at the simplest thing first.

1. Spark plug.
2. Read rule of thumb...proceed.

[mrlmd1]

Last stupid question - you do have gas in it , right? You haven't been riding around with the fuel tap set on reserve instead of run, and you're out of gas now?

[JWR]

Great catch mrlmd1. :oops:

Or did you just call me stupid :shocked: :shocked:

:2tup:

Edit: Last week I rode with my riding buddy Ed.

Ed has about 13 daily rider bikes. This day he was on a 2008 Yamaha XT 250. It would not start, but he has a long downhill street that he can roll down to start it. Saying that to say this, if he does not run the carb empty, or drain the float bowl on shut down, it will not start the next time.

It is the nature of the beast.

It really does not take a lot to flood these small singles, that's why I said check the plug 1st.

[virati]

Hey virati,

The other guys are gonna jump all over me, but, what the hey.

Is it cranking good? If yes, move on, if no, read threads on push starting/battery chargers/tenders.
Is your plug fouled? This is very easy to check. If you have been riding with the choke stuck on for a long time, it might be fouled, not sure this is really it, though.
Is you idle set too low? Probably can't really check this now, but when you do get it started and fully warmed up, something to look at.
If you really did flood it, the gas should evaporate (which, unfortunately, fouls the plug some more) in less than an hour.

If the next time you try it, if it doesn't start, pull out the plug and see if it is wet with gas. Then at least you know you are getting fuel. Your problem then might be a low spark, short or otherwise bad plug.

If the plug is dry and clean, you may have crap in your carb blocking the fuel or crap in your gas tank blocking the fuel. Other threads on here address both of those.

Typically if it won't start it's either air, spark or gas that is the problem. It doesn't sound like you have an air problem, but it's real easy to check the air box, filter and drain plug. I'd do that last.

I'm betting it's your plug or carb.

Don't light the spark plug hole with a lighter. Everyone will yell at you.

Awesome. Thanks for breaking it down like that. I'll check first thing in the morning.

I never ride with the choke on for longer than 1-2 minutes. In this instance I obviously had to for about total 30 minutes which, due to my nature, makes me think I royally messed up my bike. But i'm sure that's just my paranoia. I'll check the spark plug as its the most probable. The bike was running great until this so I don't anticipate the problem to be air or anything not directly related.

mrlmd1: Haha, yeah. I had a bad incident stopping in the middle of high traffic once and, since then, gas will never be an issue (as long as it didn't evaporate because of spark plug issues). There is indeed still gas in the tank.


Once again, thank you all for the help. It definitely eased my mind.

[alanmcorcoran]

Virati,

Riding with the choke on, once, for thirty minutes, is not going to royally mess up your bike. I suspect that some other issue that was lurking in the background, reared it's ugly head at the same time the choke got stuck.

Fortunately, it's easy to check the plug. It'll probably be fine, and then you'll have to move on to more difficult things.

If it's clean and dry, you can check it for spark. Be careful you don't shock yourself if you are using the poor man's spark tester. (Look on the Internet for best practices.) The poor man's spark tester also verifies that juice is coming down the plug wire.

(If you have a feeler gauge, you can check the gap too, but if it was working good up til yesterday the gap is probably fine.)

If the spark plug is good you probably have some kind of a fuel problem.

I've not had to go that far, but others have posted info on here about checking for fuel reaching the cylinder, cleaning the carb, unclogging the fuel line, unclogging the gas tank, fixing the "reserve tank" tube (Have you tried switching to "reserve"?)

Unfortunately, most of those things require more work and more skill.

Let's hope it's just a 3 dollar spark plug.

[Water Warrior 2]

2 things have changed from normal. The bike does not run now and the last time it was running the choke was stuck on. Looks like a simple cause and effect situation. Pull the plug and check for deposits. Betcha there is a bunch of black sooty crap on it. Pop in a new plug and I am sure it will fire right up.

[Easy Rider]

The other guys are gonna jump all over me, but, what the hey.

Is it cranking good?

No actually, you are getting pretty good with the mechanical/operational advice.
What with your "quick study/slow learner" situation, just try to remember to follow your own advice when the time comes. :poke2: :biggrin:

First thing to do is charge the battery. The GZ will refuse to start when the battery gets low but not completely dead. Next, check the plug. While it's out, turn the engine over a couple of times but don't LOOK in the hole while you do that; gas might come flying out !!!

P.S. The "choke" on a GZ, and lots of other modern bikes, is not really a choke. It is an additional little pathway in the carb (called an enricher circuit) that introduces extra gas AT IDLE ONLY and speeds up the idle speed a bit. So.....riding with the "choke" partially on should do absolutely no damage at all as the extra gas at speeds above idle is tiny.

[virati]

The other guys are gonna jump all over me, but, what the hey.

Is it cranking good?

No actually, you are getting pretty good with the mechanical/operational advice.
What with your "quick study/slow learner" situation, just try to remember to follow your own advice when the time comes. :poke2: :biggrin:

First thing to do is charge the battery. The GZ will refuse to start when the battery gets low but not completely dead. Next, check the plug. While it's out, turn the engine over a couple of times but don't LOOK in the hole while you do that; gas might come flying out !!!

P.S. The "choke" on a GZ, and lots of other modern bikes, is not really a choke. It is an additional little pathway in the carb (called an enricher circuit) that introduces extra gas AT IDLE ONLY and speeds up the idle speed a bit. So.....riding with the "choke" partially on should do absolutely no damage at all as the extra gas at speeds above idle is tiny.

Charged battery, highly unlikely that its a battery issue.

What if the "choke" is all the way on? Would that be enough to make my problems a little more awful? It was 3/4 ~ full on. It was adding enough gas while I was riding around to stall the bike 2-3 times which is what makes me suspicious.

I still haven't had a chance to check the plug. Should I go ahead and try to start the bike again before I check the plug, to make sure the problem manifests itself and I don't see a dry plug just because I haven't started it since yesterday?

(ps. I realize the last part of that last paragraph could very well demonstrate my ignorance very well. It wouldn't make too much sense for the spark plug to dry overnight in a sealed environment but i had to ask anyway)

[alanmcorcoran]

I don't think leaving the choke on is what caused the bike to stall. If the battery is charged, I'd try and start it again.

Make sure you put the choke on to start it!

Then if it doesn't start, check the plug.

In your case, I would let the bike warm up a lot before I took off the choke - like 7-10 minutes either sitting or riding.

[Easy Rider]

Charged battery, highly unlikely that its a battery issue.

It was adding enough gas while I was riding around to stall the bike 2-3 times which is what makes me suspicious.



OK, fine. Don't call it a battery issue if that makes you feel better but the fact IS that the electronic ignition will stop making a spark before the starter stops turning over, as the battery starts to become weak.

If there is nothing else wrong, the "choke" will NOT "add enough gas" to make it stall because it is not a real butterfly choke.

At this point, I think it is possible that the choke cable is not connected at one end or the other and you really are not getting the choke action that you think you are.

[mr. softie]

That was my first thought too Easy Rider, when Virati said he had removed the cable I was concerned that everything got put together correctly. to start cold it all has to be operating correctly. There is a small spring and a plunger and an o-ring and... well anyway. I also thought Virati may have inadvertently pulled the vacuum hose loose that controls the petcock while working on the cable issue...happened to me once and had me scratching my head for a while...Why wont it start? Something to check as well is all.

If my bike has the "choke" on too much when it is warmed up, it will run ok at speed but race or stall at idle, depending on engine temp and ambient air temp.

[alanmcorcoran]

Hey, Mr. softie, what are the conditions that make it stall while "ON" at idle? My experience is that it mainly stalls when it is OFF, and races when it is on. But, it doesn't behave consistently.

ALso, is this vacuum hose reasonably accessible for newbs?

[mr. softie]

On a hot day and warm motor at idle I can stall the bike if I pull the choke on all the way, not that I would do that on purpose. I tried it once to see what would happen. On a cold day it just makes the idle really fast.

The vacuum hose is a small diameter black hose that goes from the back side of the petcock down to a fitting on the carb, easy to miss should it become dislodged from the petcock.

[virati]

Decided to see if I could finagle my bike to at least start. Somehow or another I remembered switching the petcock to prime could help -> did it and it started magnificently. Rode around the apartment complex but didn't take it elsewhere. Later in the day came back and rode it around but it shut off on me when i put the choke back to normal. I figured it just wasn't warmed up quite yet so I'm not too worried about it. I kept it running for 5-10 minutes and everything sounds pretty good.

Thanks for the help everyone! If someone has an explanation for what could have been the problem/normal occurance I would love to know but right now i'm just glad its running.

On a side topic: due to my heightened sense of paranoia I finally realized that i have a very VERY uneven idle. It's very regular/periodic and can go all the way from almost dying to revving comfortably within the period of 3-4 seconds. I saw a separate topic about that earlier so I'll just go check that out.

once again, thanks folks!

PS. Easyrider: I didn't mean to seem like I was waving your advice away, sorry if it seemed like that. What i meant was, I did indeed plug the battery back into the charger and after 5-10 minutes the 'charged' light was on. Usually it takes me 5-7 hours to fully charge a dead battery so I didn't anticipate the battery losing charge to be a problem. As for the cable: everything is back into place how it was before, sans the cable zip-ties... I'll put those back on another day.

[alanmcorcoran]

Virati, you are experiencing some of the same symptoms I was with my bike. Unfortunately, I gave up on fxing it myself, took it to the shop, got it back, it was still effed, so I took it back. It's ready to be picked up again, but my driver is out of town, now until at least Wednesday, so I don't know if it's really fixed this time or what they did to fix it. When I find out, I will post in my original thread.

My "survival" mode with it was to bump up the idle a tad (but not too much, just a tiny), let the bike warm up for a few minutes before taking off, leave the choke on for longer than usual (seven to ten minutes) and wait until the bike is fully hot before taking the choke off. If I get a little nervous, I'll keep the throttle on a bit at lights. If the engine starts to race at stops, I let the clutch out a smidge. Not really a solution to the problem but it reduced my stalls.

The tech said something about cleaning out my "emissions." I don't know exactly what that is.

[music man]

The tech said something about cleaning out my "emissions." I don't know exactly what that is.

Hey Alan, I bet "Emissions" is really a code word for wallet.

[Easy Rider]

Somehow or another I remembered switching the petcock to prime could help -> did it and it started magnificently.

Have you since switched it back to "ON" ??
If not, you may have another problem brewing.

[Easy Rider]

The tech said something about cleaning out my "emissions." I don't know exactly what that is.

Most of MY emissions end up in.............. :oops: never mind! :biggrin:

If it DOES appear that they actually did something to solve the problem, PLEASE try to get some more (believable) details. I think several of us would find the information useful. :tup:

[virati]

Somehow or another I remembered switching the petcock to prime could help -> did it and it started magnificently.

Have you since switched it back to "ON" ??
If not, you may have another problem brewing.

Yep. Back to ON.