500 motor hard starts

[Swinger]

Hope you get this figured out soon. I rolled mine down a hillclimb over the weekend, causing a little damage but mainly pride is hurt more than anything. Mine is kinda running like yours except it will idle but when I give it gas it dies out. Thinking mine is definatley fuel related. Tumbled pretty hard about 200 ft down the steepest climb in Pa...whoops. Keep us posted as this may help me out also. TF is coming upfast. I would love to run against you to see how my 310 holds up to the 500. Good luck brutha and see you soon

[nstyle73]

I have heard the deal about tipping the bikes over on its side for the fuel deal and the previous owner of my 500 engine tried to sell me on that, but I only adhered to a couple slow kicks to get things lined up and one or two good kicks and it starts. Mine is a kx5 though, but does have the manual decompression in the head.

[bkm]

Did you try pull starting it again to see if it would run?

[zmpolaristech]

make sure the crankcase isn't full of fuel....kinda sounds like what your chasing. An engine with a flooded crankcase will fire for a second, but then the fire gets put out from a big gulp of fuel from the bottom end. Ive seen it in sleds DOZENS of times.

[JasonB]

It's late and been a long night but thought i would throw this up real quick; Started and ran after the first kick when I swapped to a new plug. Rode around the block and a coolant hose popped off pretty violently and the engine revved up simultaneously. So I ended up pulling the head and sure enough there was a leak. I reinstalled everything and will see how it does tomorrow. Hopefully this explains the issues I've been having

[barnett468]

Hello JasonB


Cool, start simple. I strongly suggest a compression test at this point once you fix it. As long as the head was properly assembled it never should have started to leak, something is not right then.

Just curious, did you tip it on it's side to flood it first like you have been and like the C5 guys do or did you try it my way?

[JasonB]

Ya i actually put a new plug in and kicked it over, 2nd kick it fired right up so i rode it lol. after the line popped off and sprayed me with scalding hot coolant I went and fixed what i thought was a bad connection/clamp and tossed a new plug in and gave it 4 wacks before pulling the plug. It was wet. I am guessing that for some reason the head didnt seal up well when i installed the decomp head so I hit it was some copper gasket maker, greased the threads, and torqued it all back together. I could see where it had leaked into the coolant passages. And when it was running before the coolant line came off it was smoking white more than i thought it should but contributed that to excessive oil/gas mix build up in the cases from kicking it so much. Gary heard me tell him what happened and went straight for the head, it makes sense now lol. I would assume that this major leak would have some effect on starting as well.

[just ben]

uggh. I think I may be having a similar issue with my 500. I have another gasket but the engine has to come out to get the head off. I'm glad your getting it all sorted out TF is just around the corner!

[JasonB]

ya that wasnt fun at all, but its better than having to get to the crank seals! i was worried it was going to be some serious issues to deal with. hopefully she purrs now. And I was struggling to get this together for a bachelor party ride we are doing for ATC-Eric this weekend and wanted to take this out for some shake down rides!

[ATC-Eric]

Was the head surfaced after that guy put the compression fitting in it?

[JasonB]

yes the head has had the squish band modified and the head surfaced along with the decomp being installed. It is supposed to be a bolt on and go mod, I dont know if I just messed up with the head install or what but it should be fine now. I am going to start it when i get home for lunch in 30 minutes and see how it responds. The more I think about it the more I should have realized this was an area to look at. Theres just so many things to consider with a used motor and adding other parts to the equation like a different carb and pipe etc. Hoping she fires right up and runs right finally.

[Mr. Clean]

Glad I sent you these parts when I did to give you time to get everything sorted out. That motor ran strong with no issues when I had the CR500.

Hope this is the last of your troubles and its ready for this weekend and beyond.

[JasonB]

Thanks again Mike! I really appreciate everything you did here, I need to PM you about some other stuff too. Cant wait to ride this thing around and finally open it up!

[El Camexican]

Pretty good looking bike to have parted out.

[JasonB]

i love that style of procircuit pipe too