dmx153
PR Founding Father
Sharcy, I had only put about 5 hours on it since picking it up at Red Bed in August when a few months ago it started acting up on a wednesday night practice at Malvern. At 1/2 to 3/4 throttle it would just cut out. Hershey was there and heard it thinking it was the fuel pump. Nick Stevens was there that evening and he gave me some pointers on what to check. I got it home and immediately went to Thumper Talk to see if anyone else had this problem. Sure enough there were several but the problems ranged from a loose spark plug, tip over sensor, bad connections, broken wires, remapping of the ECU and more! I went into panic mode diving head first into the manual which might as well be written in Chinese because I was immediately bewildered.
The first thing I did was check the spark plug. It was loose!! Whew! I put a new plug in and made sure it was snug. Took her for a spin in the yard and it still cut out. Next I took apart every connection, blew them out with air and re-connected with die-electric grease. Still cut out. I talked to pretty boy Cameron who told me he had to replace a fuel pump in his old 450 because it did the same thing mine was doing. The fuel pump is the most expesive part in the whole system, and me being a non-union employee, I didn't have $600 bucks laying around. I took the fuel pump down to Action sport cycles in Alliance and Matt blew out the regulator and gave me some other pointers. Put the pump back in, rode it around and the bog was gone! I was doing cartwheels at this point so I took it to BC with my 125 as a back up. Sure enough, once it got hot it started cutting out again. I finished the day at BC on my princess praying for a Keihin carb on my 450.
Finally I talked to Kris Michelik at Kame's and he let me borrow his 2009 450. I put his fuel tank on my bike and rode it for 15 minutes without issue. The new fuel pump should be here before the weekend.
