Joee
XS650 Member
Hello everybody!! I am finally back posting questions as I am so close to getting my bike 100% fixed. My situation is as follows:
Recently got a new condenser, points, and timed it properly to rule out an ignition issue.
The bike runs fine at 1st, 2nd, and 3rd gear on most flat and easy incline hills. The problem is whenever I start going up a hill in 3rd gear at about 50-55 mph (sometimes even 2nd) the bike loses torque/power and starts to stall on me after 1/4 mile of constant hard incline. I can get up hill relatively well in 2nd but I can’t go faster than 40 mph. Last thing to add is if I’m driving on flat ground the bike doesn’t have torque/power for me to be in 4th gear. When in 4th gear at full throttle it won’t pull me along any faster than 55 mph.
To give some background during all of this I have uni red foam air pod filters, no air leaks, no gas leaks, no gas restriction, gas tank properly ventilated, and I have the air clip needle (think it’s called that) down one position. Size 125 main jets and 60 pilot jets. I believe it likes the size 60 pilot jets as it always liked to start with those in. Never liked anything smaller that I’ve tried.
Recently I got bigger main jets in the mail to test if this would fix it, sizes included: 130, 135, 140, 143. And today I cleaned carbs out properly and tried the size 135 and the bike seemed to run stronger it definitely felt better while riding. But going up that same 1/4 mile hill it started to stall so I shifted down to 2nd and it even started to stall (did end up stalling) in 2nd which is unusual. Fast forward 30 minutes I put size 130 main jets in and did the same thing. And it stalled basically the same way but did drive a little further up the hill. Not sure if this was because engine was warm enough or what. Only difference was that while stalling and even after starting it for the ride back to the shop it did backfire a little bit in the beginning of ride back.
Question is as follows: what size main jet should I use? And if that’s not the issue what could be causing the bike to not be able to provide torque/power in these cases? How to fix?
Recently got a new condenser, points, and timed it properly to rule out an ignition issue.
The bike runs fine at 1st, 2nd, and 3rd gear on most flat and easy incline hills. The problem is whenever I start going up a hill in 3rd gear at about 50-55 mph (sometimes even 2nd) the bike loses torque/power and starts to stall on me after 1/4 mile of constant hard incline. I can get up hill relatively well in 2nd but I can’t go faster than 40 mph. Last thing to add is if I’m driving on flat ground the bike doesn’t have torque/power for me to be in 4th gear. When in 4th gear at full throttle it won’t pull me along any faster than 55 mph.
To give some background during all of this I have uni red foam air pod filters, no air leaks, no gas leaks, no gas restriction, gas tank properly ventilated, and I have the air clip needle (think it’s called that) down one position. Size 125 main jets and 60 pilot jets. I believe it likes the size 60 pilot jets as it always liked to start with those in. Never liked anything smaller that I’ve tried.
Recently I got bigger main jets in the mail to test if this would fix it, sizes included: 130, 135, 140, 143. And today I cleaned carbs out properly and tried the size 135 and the bike seemed to run stronger it definitely felt better while riding. But going up that same 1/4 mile hill it started to stall so I shifted down to 2nd and it even started to stall (did end up stalling) in 2nd which is unusual. Fast forward 30 minutes I put size 130 main jets in and did the same thing. And it stalled basically the same way but did drive a little further up the hill. Not sure if this was because engine was warm enough or what. Only difference was that while stalling and even after starting it for the ride back to the shop it did backfire a little bit in the beginning of ride back.
Question is as follows: what size main jet should I use? And if that’s not the issue what could be causing the bike to not be able to provide torque/power in these cases? How to fix?
