Post by milehigh on Oct 18, 2019 12:46:16 GMT -5
Hey all, been using this forum and everyone's great knowledge to help troubleshoot my Ruckus. Has gotten to the point where I need some help as I haven't been able to figure it out. I wouldn't call myself super knowledgeable, but i'm usually good about learning quickly and figuring things out as I go (this site has helped a lot).
Background:
Let my Ruckus sit for a long time with no use, not surprising it didn't start when I tried it. Got the urge to use it more again. The last time that happened I did some research and found the slow jet in the carb commonly gets clogged up, and it had fixed it before for me. So I immediately opened her up and got the carb out, cleaned all the jets with cleaner, used small wire to poke through all holes, gave it the works. In addition, I also figured the following wouldn't hurt:
- new spark plug (oem)
- gas was drained (filled with 91)
It started right up after that. However it wasn't running totally right. It would idle great, but you couldn't give it a ton of gas. Probably about 10 mph tops. Wasn't sure exactly what to do so I just let it sit for a couple hours and figured i'd come back to it. Came back a couple hours later, started it, reved it to full throttle on the stand, it to my surprise it sounded great. Took it for a spin and pretty much ran exactly like I remembered. All was well. Rode it again the next day - great.
When I came to ride it again a day or 2 after that I had a new air filter (briggs and straton) with me. I figured that was one more easy thing I could do since I couldn't ever remember replacing it in a long time. I put that in and started it up to take it for a ride, and things regressed. Similar to before, I couldn't get up to top speed, but this time it ran better, but my top speed is about 28mph for a good straight away. When running it on the stand it will have a slight bog or hesitation at full throttle. Basically everything sounds great all the way up to about 75% throttle, but from 75%-100% it's like it just hits a limit and stops. It will not go past that point.
So that started me down a rabbit hole of doing a lot of research and trying to find what is going on:
- cleaned the carb again, paying extra attention to the main jet thinking that was maybe impacting full throttle
- went back to oem air filter
- ran it on the stand with the tank above the carb with a gravity line straight into carb to see if it was a fuel pump/filter thing. ran the same.
- sprayed carb cleaner on every connection hose I could find leading to and from the carb while idling to see if maybe there is some type of air leak
- cover half of the air intake inlet with my hand, which makes it run worse, which from my research should tell me it's maybe running rich?
- I live in Denver, elevation 5,280 so thought maybe it wasn't getting enough air. got a 72 main jet from a local dealer and tried that to reduce a bit. no change.
- ran stock 75 jet with both the B&S air filter, and the oem filter. performs the same
- ran smallter 72 main with both air filters as well, and also tried it with zero air filter at all and still no difference.
It seems like everything I change in any combination, it is performing the exact same. Throttle from 75% just isn't honored. Sometimes it will have a slight pulsing rev when I have it wide open, but most of the time it sounds "fine" it just won't reach that RPM that I know it should. It's fully stock (minus me tweaking that jet for that one test, to no avail). I've tried to research the throttle positioning sensor and wonder if that could mess with anything? Or there is maybe some small leak somewhere that I can't find? Not really sure what to tackle next, and hoping someone sees this that may have a clue. I don't really have any interest in modding it - just want it to run well and consistently. Thanks in advance...
Mark
Background:
Let my Ruckus sit for a long time with no use, not surprising it didn't start when I tried it. Got the urge to use it more again. The last time that happened I did some research and found the slow jet in the carb commonly gets clogged up, and it had fixed it before for me. So I immediately opened her up and got the carb out, cleaned all the jets with cleaner, used small wire to poke through all holes, gave it the works. In addition, I also figured the following wouldn't hurt:
- new spark plug (oem)
- gas was drained (filled with 91)
It started right up after that. However it wasn't running totally right. It would idle great, but you couldn't give it a ton of gas. Probably about 10 mph tops. Wasn't sure exactly what to do so I just let it sit for a couple hours and figured i'd come back to it. Came back a couple hours later, started it, reved it to full throttle on the stand, it to my surprise it sounded great. Took it for a spin and pretty much ran exactly like I remembered. All was well. Rode it again the next day - great.
When I came to ride it again a day or 2 after that I had a new air filter (briggs and straton) with me. I figured that was one more easy thing I could do since I couldn't ever remember replacing it in a long time. I put that in and started it up to take it for a ride, and things regressed. Similar to before, I couldn't get up to top speed, but this time it ran better, but my top speed is about 28mph for a good straight away. When running it on the stand it will have a slight bog or hesitation at full throttle. Basically everything sounds great all the way up to about 75% throttle, but from 75%-100% it's like it just hits a limit and stops. It will not go past that point.
So that started me down a rabbit hole of doing a lot of research and trying to find what is going on:
- cleaned the carb again, paying extra attention to the main jet thinking that was maybe impacting full throttle
- went back to oem air filter
- ran it on the stand with the tank above the carb with a gravity line straight into carb to see if it was a fuel pump/filter thing. ran the same.
- sprayed carb cleaner on every connection hose I could find leading to and from the carb while idling to see if maybe there is some type of air leak
- cover half of the air intake inlet with my hand, which makes it run worse, which from my research should tell me it's maybe running rich?
- I live in Denver, elevation 5,280 so thought maybe it wasn't getting enough air. got a 72 main jet from a local dealer and tried that to reduce a bit. no change.
- ran stock 75 jet with both the B&S air filter, and the oem filter. performs the same
- ran smallter 72 main with both air filters as well, and also tried it with zero air filter at all and still no difference.
It seems like everything I change in any combination, it is performing the exact same. Throttle from 75% just isn't honored. Sometimes it will have a slight pulsing rev when I have it wide open, but most of the time it sounds "fine" it just won't reach that RPM that I know it should. It's fully stock (minus me tweaking that jet for that one test, to no avail). I've tried to research the throttle positioning sensor and wonder if that could mess with anything? Or there is maybe some small leak somewhere that I can't find? Not really sure what to tackle next, and hoping someone sees this that may have a clue. I don't really have any interest in modding it - just want it to run well and consistently. Thanks in advance...
Mark