Greetings gents,
My AVL left me stranded last night. Went back to troubleshoot a few things today, and here are my symptoms. Any advice you can give me is greatly appreciated:
First, this problem seems to have come out of the blue. Two weeks ago I did a three day, 400? mile round trip from Baltimore to Front Royal, VA, then down Skyline drive to Charlottesville, and back home. It ran excellent the entire time. Since that trip I have done a few short in-town trips with no issues, and 2 or 3 longer afternoon jaunts (maybe 80 miles each). I had an all day enduro ride planned for today, so yesterday I took it out just to doublecheck things were in working order. As you can gather from the title of this thread I had issues.
It should go on record that the only things I'd done to the bike in the week before yesterday's test ride were to top off engine oil, check tappet adjustment (seemed fine so didn't adjust) and re-mounted my exhaust header pipe using black liquid gasket. The previous liquid gasket seal broke when I re-packed the emgo muffler prior to Shenandoah. My bike is jetted very rich so the additional leanness due to exhaust leak wasn't a concern.
Here's what happened yesterday:
Took it through the city neighborhoods a bit to warm it up and it ran great. Then got on the freeway just to make sure it was fine at higher speeds. It was running great for a few minutes, then when I was around 60 mph it started bogging down, running very jerkily, and tried to die on me. I flipped the reserve petcock just in case (although it didn't seem like a low-fuel issue).
Still rolling on the highway shoulder I dropped it into gear to bump-start. It jerkily fired back up, and seemed fine. I was right at the next offramp, so I exited the highway via the shoulder at low speeds (30 mph), and continued to ride at those speeds for a bit.
It ran fine at speeds from stopped idle to 40 mph, with no noticeable changes or reoccurance of the issue. I didn't risk shutting it down in case it wouldn't re-start, thus stranding me. After 10 minutes of no issue, I pulled a U-turn to get back on the highway home. I kept it at 50 mph max, and it got me home without issue.
I let it cool off for 2 hours, then doublechecked the pushrod adjusters. Adjustment was fine, but I noticed pools of oil in the bottom of the tappet-case. Maybe this is normal though, since I always do tappets after it sits at least overnight. (oil would normally seep its way down to the sump?).
Nevertheless, this running issue was unsettling, but I was determined to get the bike running well for Sunday's (today's) supposed enduro ride. My wife and I decided to take the bike out for dinner to make sure everything was in working order. Who knows... could have been a fluke right? (wrong)
So the wife and I geared up, and the Enfield started, first kick. I noticed the headlight wasn't working, but all other running lights/brake lights/ turn signals were fine, so no sweat. Headlights are frustrating, but simple to fix. Ignored it, went for the test ride anyway and this is what happened:
We took it easy, as you do with two full grown humans on a royal enfield. We did a few minutes of semi-highway speeds, but didn’t exceed 50 mph. No issues. Got on some slow twisties and it was fine for a while. After about 20 minutes on back roads the stuttering / bogging / dying issue came back. It didn’t die for us like it did in my first test ride, but I was forced to keep it at high throttle just to make forward progress. It felt like it was really chugging and not knowing much about the inner workings of engines, my novice brain decided it was probably some sort of timing issue. I don’t want to muddy the waters with naïve conjecture, but it felt, I believe the term is, ‘retarded’. Like I was obviously getting a spark, but sometimes it came just a tad bit later than it should have?
This seemed to go away when we got down to idling RPM’s, but the bogging came back under any mild accelerating load. We pulled over in short order and scratched our heads, realizing our dinner plans [and my beloved enduro trip] were both in jeopardy. It was then that we noticed not only was the headlight still off, but the rest of the running lights and brake lights (all LED) had also crapped out. Sometimes I have to jiggle the right-hand lighting control switch a bit to get the lights to come on, but no amount of jiggling brought my beautiful LEDs back to life. We were around the corner from a restaurant of some sort, so limped the still idling Enfield over to it, parked, and morosely purchased and ate foodstuffs. Realizing my Sunday enduro trip was probably canceled, I hoped just to get us home without further issue. We can do it all on local roads, it just takes longer, but there’s no way I was going to try 50 mph with the current issues.
At this point my novice noodle decided that maybe it was a battery or alternator issue. Maybe it began with not enough juice to power the headlamp, then after riding it for 30 minutes, it drained the battery of even enough to power the LEDS, and the spark was maybe only firing by the kinetic energy of the motorcycle’s forward motion. Again, I’m no mechanic, and there are undoubtedly flaws with these theories. For instance, it idled fine when stopped. But no lights.
So after dinner we reluctantly fired it back up and headed in the direction of home via slow local roads. Within a minute of riding I realized a disturbing amount of engine clatter / knocking under load. It wasn’t backfiring into the carb, just loud metal-on-metal sounds. This is bad, I thought, but let’s see if we can’t get home. When I kept the engine down to idling rpm’s the clatter ceased, or was at least less apparent underneath the normal engine noise. I kept it to 20-25 mph, and pulled over to let any cars pass. We made it about 5 miles in this fashion, then it did the heavy bogging / stuttering / dying again. I couldn’t bump start it back on, so we rolled to a stop. I couldn’t get it to kick over at all. Couldn’t coax it to life. I walked it to a neighborhood parking spot on the street, and we called a cab to get home.
I was bummed, but it’s part of the ‘charm’ of Enfield ownership, right? So now to learn what happened. I realize I may have multiple issues here. I went back up with all my tools and manuals this afternoon, and this is what I found:
Still no lights. Turned the key and it started right up. Didn’t put it in gear. Turned it off, rolled it into a parking lot and preceded to do my novice troubleshooting.
Tested the battery with multimeter: full charge. There goes the alternator theory. The headlight is getting juice under both the hi-and-low beam settings, and the headlight ground is continuous. So it’s the bulb. No worries, but that doesn’t solve the other lighting issues.
Main fuse is fine, not burnt. I have the green TCI unit, and from what I’ve learned on here, the TCI deals with spark plug timing in a curve as speeds and RPM’s increase. From what very little I know about engines, it seems like the only electrical issue that could have any impact on my engine issue would have to stem in some way from the TCI. Again, I could be completely wrong.
On another post on here I read that somebody else had a similar dying issue (but his was at idle) and it turned out the spark plug was on the fritz. To eliminate that variable I popped in a brand new spark plug. Realizing I was nearing the limit of my troubleshooting abilities, I decided to take it for a short spin to gather as much data as I could for this here forum post.
It fired right up, no problem. Idled fine and strong. I took it around a few blocks in the neighborhood, and realized that it had a lot of high-pitched clatter at the top section of the engine while under load. It seemed to run fine at lower RPM’s, so I did a few circles like that to gather more data. With the bike stopped, but giving it 50% throttle, there is a little bit of this top end clatter, but nothing compared to when it’s under load. I took it for a spin through the neighborhood for another 5 minutes, and it seemed to be running fine. I stopped noticing the clatter, and was beginning to think I’d just imagined all this insanity. Then after coasting/ riding under mild load down a slow residential neighborhood hill, it straight out died, just like last night. I turned it off, tried to kick it over a handful of times, but dead it is. Rolled it into a parking spot, trudged back to my car, and here I am to tell my tale.
I know Enfields are known for shoddy factory wiring. Short of me pulling it all apart and re-doing all the wiring with new connectors and wires and solder (which I may do this winter anyway), does anyone have any ideas as to where I should begin? There is clearly an electrical issue, but I am unsure if it is isolated-from-or-directly-related to my engine issue.
Thanks so much in advance for any help. I am determined to fix this, but like everything else on my Enfield I’ll have to learn by doing, with the help of you fine folks on the forum.
Many thanks again.
Chuck
Topic: Engine Clatter, Electricals, & Breakdown (Read 11038 times)