My 98 bandit has a turnover problem and dies when stood at lights etc any ideas?

Question

I have a 98 bandit which I have recently bought - for some reason it starts and rides fine except when its stood at lights or just left to tick over the engine dies - then struggles to restart. I have adjusted the revs, and balanced the carbs but it is still dying on me. The lines seem clean enough and fuel is getting through but really dunno whats going on - any ideas?

Answer 1

What was the altitude that you bought it in realtion to where you have it now, if the difference is large it may have been jetted  for the thinner or heavier air that it was previously in.  Valve clearances that are too tight cause  big problems such as hard to start, longer warm up times, excessive choke usage, wich in time results in fouled plugs and bad idling.  A poor charging system and a weak battery could cause this, since its not getting enough "juice" to keep firing the plugs until you reach an rpm where the generator starts to make enough voltage to take care of what the battery is lacking.  really dirty plugs could do this, and while they are out you should check the color, are they the color of milk chocolate, well if not the should be, white indicates lean, black indicates rich.  how fast does the engine turn over when your trying to start it? my opinion is that the battery is crapped out on you or your voltage regulator is going or gone out and not charging your battery. you could also try to play with your mixture screwsm givin that you have the idle turned to the proper spot, not too low, somewhere around 1000 is good. what you do is turn the mixture screws out until the engine starts to die off, then turn them in, while counting the number of turns it takes to lean the mixture out where it starts to stumble on the lean side, then set the s***w in the middle of this number that you counted, do each carb seperatly.

Answer 2

Maybe the idle jet is dirty.