Cold Weather Starting

My bike has a real hard time starting in the cold (if it will at all). Is there anything I can do to help it out at all?

 

Zvede, you might try cleaning the enrichment circuit in your float bowels. they may be a little gunked up. look for the thread clean you enrichment circuit, i believe it is in the faq section of the forums. i know it made a huge difference on my 650. good luck.

 

Oh how I wish I would have known this when I cleaned my carbs.... I hate taking those things off. Oh well though. Hopefully it solves my problem. Thanks much.

 

i know what you mean, i think i had mine off a dozen times by the time i got the enrichment circuits cleaned. after i got them clean it fired on the first turn of the starter. it's amazing. i also got pretty good at pullinig & putting them back on. ha ha.

 

Normally it is the starter JET that is in the carb float bowls that is clogged, and you can take the bowls off the carbs without removing the carbs from the engine.......

http://www.xjbikes.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=8918.html

With the proper sized thin wire-probe, you can also clean out the starter jet brass pick-up tube that hangs down from the carb body while you've got the float bowls off.

 

what's the proper size? would a guitar string cut it?

 

The easiest way to clean an enrichment circuit is to boil the carb bowl and use the carb spray can with thin red straw to shoot the crud out while the bowl is hot.

 

A high E string or even a B should work well for the BOWL cleaning. The jet that extends from the Carb Body MIGHT fit a high E, but not 100% sure. It took the smallest guage from a welding tip cleaner to fit.
OR
You can spring for a welding tip cleaner(about 3-5 bucks) and will have 10-15 diffrent gauges to choose from

 

Cleaned out the enrichment circuits and I am still having the same problem. I am thinking maybe there isnt enough juice to the starter?

 

Put the bowls in the dishwasher ^^ cleans 'em right up.

 

From experience, can I recommend that you have a charged battery.

I put mine on the charger for about an hour in the mornings while I get ready for work in winter and she starts up pretty easily with full choke/enrichment.

But if I skip that for a morning or two it struggles.

The reason being is that it takes quite a bit of juice to kick the engine over and that leaves only a little to generate spark - probably results in a weaker spark as the battery is supplying the power to spark the spark plugs; but if there's a fair amount of power going to the starter it reduces the residual amount going to the plugs at the same time.

A couple of mornings with no charger and I'm not sure if my old 900 will start. But, on the charger (only a small 2700ma charger) for an hour makes a noticeable difference.

Your problem could be the carbs etc., but I'd always start at the battery when it comes to difficult starting issues and then work from there.

See how you go...

Cheers.

 

If its well below freezing I have to use FULL choke.
If its above freezing I can start with about half choke.

It takes some practice to get to know your bike's optimum choke setting.

How does it start when its warm?

Are your spark plugs fouled?

Have you tried starter spray?