Hi Fellas,
I'm a new RE owner, and this is my first post. I'm glad to be a part of the club, and I love the bike.
I have a 2009 Military (C5 / UCE / EFI). The bike has approximately 4300 miles on it, and I've only had a few minor problems: bad battery (twice), replaced chain at 4000 miles, and now I'm having a performance issue.
The bike misfires and backfires. Sometimes it is REALLY bad. I worried that I wouldn't make it to my house 2 miles away a couple of days ago. Sometimes it doesn't happen at all. I took an hour ride yesterday, wound out the bike and it performed perfectly. Today it is working perfectly.
Related Notes:
1) The exhaust pipe has heavy bluing. (Maybe the engine is running lean?)
2) I can't see a substantial difference with temperature, but the problems only started this summer, and the weather in Texas is always warm.
3) In the past couple of days, when bike has worked well, there is a strong smell of gasoline. That is new and unusual. Smells like it is running rich.
Here are the possibilities I can think of:
1) One of the sensors used for EFI is going bad.
2) There is a vacuum leak either in air intake or with the exhaust that gets seeled up when the engine heats up.
3) The bike just takes a while to warm up, and it is going to misfire / backfire until it does. But that isn't normal for EFI? Correct? And this didn't start until around 3000 miles.
Any ideas? What could make the system suddenly go from running lean to running rich? Or could the symptoms be caused by something else?
Thanks
Mance