Chugging....sluggish.....cutting out....
 

Hey guys! Strange goins on with my 05 SV650 at the weekend. Can anyone shed any light on this?

Planned to head to away for the weekend. Filled up with petrol. Put in €16 (I'm in Ireland) worth - it was closer to empty than I normally like it to get. Still should have been 3 litres or so in it though.

Set off from there and got maybe 3/4 km before bike chugged a little. I was opening it up a bit and it just kinda jerks and loses acceleration. This continued on. Opening throttle resulting in acceleration but nothing like there should have been and the bike randomly speeding up before chugging and spluttering another bit.

Bike felt wrong. Didn't reckon I'd make it to my destination. I was out the road almost 50km before I turned back. Coming back in whenever I had to slow/stop at lights bike would cut out and I could hear it backfiring. I could start it with really high revs but it's just not right.

Another weird thing is that at 100km it started telling me it needed petrol again. It couldn't. Normally doesn't start flashing till around 120km and then I can go to around 155km before light stays on. It's at around 113km now and light is staying on. It's as if I'm losing the petrol or something.....

Only other info I have is that I'm about 900km past the 12000km service it's due so maybe that's a factor...

Really can't think of anything else to tell you guys. It was really weird. Went back to petrol station to make sure I'd put unleaded in it and not diesel or something. Asked yer man there if anyone had complained about the petrol being dirty or anything but he didn't have much English.

What would cause the fuel consumption to go up like that and for me to lose throttle/performance. It sounds unhealthy too and was backfiring.

Spark plug maybe. Bad petrol?

Any ideas?!

Backfiring... so unburnt fuel in the exhaust perhaps, and that would be an iginition problem. At least have a look at your spark plugs - both are easy to get to, especially the rear without too much hassle.

I would also consider the fuel you put in - may have water in it, which is easy to check, but difficult to get to. You'd need to drain some into a glass from the bottom of the tank, and see what sediment and moisture had gathered.

Of course, you might have put diesel in it :D

I'm not too good with this kind of thing but someone posted a similar problem recently and it turned out to be a faulty coil. Suppose you should check you've got a spark at both plugs. Was it wet? Could be the classic problem of the front plug getting wet. Might be worth filling up at a different petrol station as well just incase it is the fuel.

More questions than answers there, sorry. Someone more clued up will be along soon.

Ok. Bike wasn't wet before I took it out. It was raining very heavily here alright. I was soaked by the time I got back home.

Didn't put diesel in it!! haha Checked that at the petrol station.

This thing with the front plug getting wet on SVs seems to be something I'm hearing a good bit.....do symptoms I'm experiencing really suggest this?

Sounds similar to my wet front plug experience. Popping, backfiring, Stalling at idle, no power when trying to accelerate hard or pulling away from junctions. Riding along and then all of a sudden you get full power again and then for no reason it drops away again. Also the exhaust note sounds funny / flat when only running on one cylinder.

An easy way to check if its the front plug is to spit on the front downpipe. If your spit boils away then its not that, if it doesnt and the front down pipe feels cold then that cylinder isnt firing. If you have been riding in heavy rain checking for a wet front plug would bee the first thing I would do.

Fizzwheel.....that really sounds exaclty like what I've got going on. I'll be checking the plug when I get home.

I'm terrible with mechanical stuff so I'm sure even FINDING the plug will be a major issue.

Cheers!

Could be water in the front plug like they've all said, but I had symptoms like that when I had a tank of gritty/watery petrol and it blocked the fuel pump and injectors. Check the plug first though because that's easy. it's a fair owd job cleaning the fuel system out :roll:

Well if the issue is 'gritty watery petrol' surely that's the fault of the garage where I filled up. I won't be getting hit for the cost of a complete clean out of the system. If it's down to what I went and paid money for from the petrol station, then they'd better cover my costs to rectify the situation.

HOPEFULLY it's just the plug!!

My bike behaved like that a while back(in dry conditions)
The dealer didn't have time to pinpoint the exact problem
so they took a complete fuel injection assembly from their
demobike and mounted it on my bike and now it works
perfect again.
Shoul'd be interesting too know what the problem was though?

Alrighty boys and girls. I got at the bike last Friday and it was indeed a wet front plug issue. I got it out, dried it off, dried out the channel into the engine, popped it back in and she started no bother. I've driven it around 20km since and all seems fine.

Thanks for the help as usual!