Interstate Speeds and (interminttently) Bike Dies

5twins,

Soaked the carbs today. Seemed to make a bit of an improvement. But, still not running 100%. I did find that one of the right carb boot bolts was a bit loose and I tried to tighten it up and it continued to spin. Not good! The right carb is also making funky sound. The right carb "tweaks". It will be running and it will hiccup and then "tweak" I could feel some air pushing through the mating surfaces of the boot and the cylinder head when the carbs would " tweak". I'm thinking not being able to hold the seal could be the issue. I also noticed really nice oil leak coming from the left cylinder head gasket today as well. So I think I have decided to garage the bike for the year. The plan when bought the bike this summer was to tear the motor and bike apart this winter and rebuild them. Seems as of now I have a bit of work to do in order to fix the issues at hand and to me It may be pointless to tear it all apart to fix and then tearing it all apart again in about a month when the snow starts to fly.

To get the passageways cleared, soaking may not be enough. Blowing through them with compressed air is usually required. Yes, you will need to fix that stripped screw before you can tune the carbs properly.

Your symptoms sound identical to mine and I just can't figure this out to me I think it's electrical also I'm not wanting to replace pamco reg/rec and coil just to find out what's wrong please give me an update if you have figured out something thanx

Bump anyone else have an issue like this?

Bumping an old post. Same thing is happening to me. Just took a trip from Toronto to kingston, bikes just flat out dies when cruising from 90-100km/h at a steady 4k rpm. The bike starts on one kick and idles great, runs forever at 80km/h but give her a bit more juice for a little while to keep up with traffic and she just stops.

Extra fun for me is that she died on the express lane of a 12 lane highway during a thunderstorm today and refused to start again. She's still sitting there getting picked up by some guy..

I'm going to bring her to my guy this week and report back his theory.

On top of being annoying this is also crazy dangerous.

Hey, Uhlaf. Thinking about your TCI and the condition of your trigger magnet. Have a look at these:

http://www.xs650.com/forum/showthread.php?t=36687
http://www.xs650.com/forum/showthread.php?t=36575

I'm with 2many, electrical fault; anything from pickups through the coil could be the issue.
But your deal today with the thunderstorm could be an entirely separate issue with water getting somewhere the bike didn't like either electric or intake.
Uhlaf; we don't know what you're riding?

Of course! I have an 81 Special II

It's possible it was the rain, but it had happened more than once on my trip. Having never experience anything like it I thought it was the bike overheating; I usually pull over to some shade or if I'm in a residential area gently hose her down at a gas station/kindly farmer.

Obviously I was wrong. I'll report back after I get some rare earth magnets and some weld and report back.