Total Motorcycle Community Forums

recently, I bought an 87 fz 700 under the assumption that it had not been run in a few months and the owner wasn't sure of the condition. Before I buy the bike I check it over for any obvious signs of neglect (beside not being run), everything looks pretty tidy. so at home I change the oil, drain and refill the gas tank, and hook up the battery charger. I check the filters (air and fuel), they are good. I also checked the carbs, they look pretty clean. so after the battery has charged for a good amount of time I attempt to start it. the engine cranks over real hard but doesn't start. now, the spark plugs are kinda hard to get to, so I haven't checked them out. I did get out the multimeter and check if I have current at the coils, I do. now what?

flint

If you have some carb cleaner spray, spray a bit into the carbs and see if it fires off. If it does, your problem may be in the fuel delivery. I hope this helps you out some.

thats what I was planning on doing last night, but then my battery charger went on the fritz, so I gotta get a new one and try it tonight

I've noticed here on this forum that when having trouble with feul delivery a lot of the times it is that the vaccuum hose to the feul cut off has cracks and does not hold the vaccuum to keep the valve open.

Good point niterider. Most of the vacuum operated petcocks I've seen have a "prime" position which will deliver fuel without requiring a vacuum. A good test is that if the bike will run on "prime", but not on other postiions, then you have a problem with a vacuum line or petcock diaphram.

well, I got a new battery charger assuming that the problem was the charger. it kept on giving me the fault message. so I exchanged it for a new charger, went home and hooked it up. and about 3 seconds later it gave me the same message. so I took the battery out of the bike and hooked it up, per the instructions. I turned it on and still no luck. so now I think I need a new battery before I can continue with getting the bike started. that sucks. whats weird is it worked for a couple of hours the night I got the bike, then the next night it gave me the fault message.

well, its started and running. now the carbs need balanced. I plan on using the sticky in this forum to try and do it myself. Had a friend laugh at me when I told him I was going to try to balance the carbs myself. he likes to think of himself as quite a mechanic, but then he was pretty sure that the tubing and ATF method was not going to work.

I tried that method on the sticky. I belive that it will work; however, all I managed to do was run the oil into the carb that had the higher vaccuum.
I may need a tube with a bigger diameter, so that the oil will allow air to flow through it instead of sucking the oil out of the tube. Good luck