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Virago dies when you hit the throttle

Discussion in 'Other Motorcycles' started by XJPilot, Apr 28, 2011.

  1. XJPilot

    XJPilot Member

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    My buddy has been rebuilding his Virago 500 all winter with me and my XJ550, and we were finally able to get it started today after realizing that we had plugged the coils into the wiring harness backwards. Anyways, it started and ran great for about 15 minutes while we were tuning it but then started to backfire a bit and eventually bogged down to idle. Still idled fine but as soon as you hit the throttle it would die. Now it has become hard, if not impossible to start and revs up to about 3000 rpm if you do it slowly, but anything more and it will die. I assume it's a lean mixture condition, but even with the pilot screws out 4 turns (manual calls for 2 turns) it would still do it. Any thoughts?
     
    XJPilot, Apr 28, 2011
    #1
  2. dwcopple

    dwcopple Active Member

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    next size up pilots should do it
     
    dwcopple, Apr 29, 2011
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  3. zap2504

    zap2504 Member

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    All the usual suspects - leaky carb manifolds, leaky vacuum lines, dirty carb passages...
     
    zap2504, Apr 29, 2011
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  4. JFStewart

    JFStewart Member

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    Check the easy things first. Carb issues are a possibility but is it possible that the timing may have slipped?

    If it's lean, colour tuning should indicate the condition, as you turn the screws to rich the spark should go toward yellow. If it stays blue, it may have the vacuum leak causing a lean mixture.
     
    JFStewart, Apr 29, 2011
    #4

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