studlymandingo
Commander
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2006
- Messages
- 2,716
'96 Kawasaki ZXi 1100, just recently rebuilt the carbs and she was running great; just took her out this evening and I couldn't get it over 4000 RPMs without it stumbling and dying. It starts easily and idles perfectly but anytime I try to get it over 4K I would get the same result. If I pump the primer it will run fine for a few seconds so this tells me there is a fuel delivery problem. I checked all of the connections and found no leaks anywhere. The last time it was used was 2 weeks ago, I let a buddy take it to the beach where I was with my boat. He didn't close the flush valve before he took off, so there was water shooting into the engine compartment; it was only ridden a short distance from the ramp to where I was beached, he told me it was running like crap I checked it, found the cap off and tightened it up. I rode it for a while with it sputtering and it finally began to clear up. It ran great for the last 3 hours we had it out. It was run and flushed with fresh water when I got home. I hadn't used it since until today.
I checked the compression, 125-130 on all 3, no great variations. I checked spark with a spark-gap tester and had spark on all three. I checked my needle settings and they are the same, even opened the high-speed needles a bit with no change.
I noticed when running on the flush valve back at home, the front two cylinders were warmer than the rear cylinder; also, I could stall the motor by placing my hand over either of the front two carbs, but placing my hand over the rear carb would only cause the motor to stumble. This makes me think there should be some sort of vacuum leak associated with this cylinder. When I squeeze the throttle, the accelerator pump shoots an equal amount of fuel into all three carbs. The motor will run on any single cylinder (the other two plug wires disconnected) so it would seem that all cylinders are firing properly.
I just don't get it, there is fuel, fire, and compression. Is it possible that some saltwater got into the carbs when the ski was run with the flush valve open? It ran great for several hours after this happened, so it would not really seem to be the answer.
Any ideas where I should be looking?
I checked the compression, 125-130 on all 3, no great variations. I checked spark with a spark-gap tester and had spark on all three. I checked my needle settings and they are the same, even opened the high-speed needles a bit with no change.
I noticed when running on the flush valve back at home, the front two cylinders were warmer than the rear cylinder; also, I could stall the motor by placing my hand over either of the front two carbs, but placing my hand over the rear carb would only cause the motor to stumble. This makes me think there should be some sort of vacuum leak associated with this cylinder. When I squeeze the throttle, the accelerator pump shoots an equal amount of fuel into all three carbs. The motor will run on any single cylinder (the other two plug wires disconnected) so it would seem that all cylinders are firing properly.
I just don't get it, there is fuel, fire, and compression. Is it possible that some saltwater got into the carbs when the ski was run with the flush valve open? It ran great for several hours after this happened, so it would not really seem to be the answer.
Any ideas where I should be looking?
