angrygirafe

I road through Oregon and Idaho in August once. Took a week to lose the headache from all the smoke

Nikens have a plastic plate holder?

I believe it 😂

I lived in Temecula for 4 years while I was going to school, and averaged riding 20k miles a year down there. What a great place to ride!

ACC is awesome in cars, because those are just temporary prisons we’re waiting to get out of. On a motorcycle, the ultimate expression of freedom? No thank you

We did find four broken vac caps in my bike, but it didn’t help replacing those, or cleaning and syncing the the throttle bodies, or trying a different ECU, or checking the clutch switch, or having the valves/timing verified by a second shop, or replacing the neutral sensor, or… Bleh. Granted, I’m sneaking up on 52k miles, so we may be having very similar problems for very different reasons. I’ll keep an eye on this thread and let you know if I find anything definitive. ETA; also tried new battery. Twice.

Rain came early this week, so no tear down this weekend. I am almost through a tank with the Ring Free shock treatment and things were much better today. Yamaha recommends 2oz per gallon and something like 60 gallons for a full treatment. Well, I put 8 ounces in a full tank, and I’ll do the last 4 ounces in the next tank. Probably won’t treat 60 gallons worth at that ratio though. I rode close to 100 miles today between commuting and my lunch break, trying to stay over 6k rpms. Which was easy coming home, since I was chasing a Repsol down the freeway, and he wasn’t shy about using that throttle. Man, those things are quick! But I only had idle issues maybe 25% of the time today, almost none on the way home, and they ALL CORRECTED within a couple seconds. Even at the long lights. I’m hesitant to say that the Ring Free is fixing it, but it was hot out (107F), the bike was hot, and this is way better than a couple days ago. I’ll polish off the bottle in the next tank, and might do one more before changing the oil if it continues to improve over the next tank. I hope so.

Oh man, we are in very similar boats. For what it’s worth, I’m almost a tanks worth of gas into a Ring Free shock treatment, and today things were noticeably better. Not fixed, but definitely better.

Right now the weather looks like I might be able to check it out this weekend. Hopefully. It’ll definitely be a learning experience since I haven’t done throttle bodies before. Really hoping it’s not valves/timing though.

Cold start is great. Hot start is a little weak, and seems to require a little throttle. I know my BIL cleaned the TBs, and actually has a whole extra YCCT unit he was intending to install but didn’t get to.

I’ll gladly take any advice! I’m 90% sure the problem is that I paid “professionals” to do the work

Yeah that pretty much sums it up!

Long overdue update time, tl;dr: NO ERROR CODES AND IT RUNS. Mostly. So it's been a while. A looooong while. Such a long while, that my Brother in Law actually had possession of the bike for the last few months. He used to ride, he was getting back into, and bought an S1000R that scared him to death. He's more mechanically minded than me, so I told him he could HAVE the FJ, and it was up to him to get it running. So he did. I had bought an ECU and Wiring harness from a wrecked bike and just had them sitting in the garage. He replaced the ECU connector with the one off the wreck and most of the time the fault code went away. He did some hunting, and replaced the FUSE HOLDER as well, as apparently the contacts had enough play after so much poking around that the ETV fuse would lose continuity and throw the error. So. NO MORE FAULT YAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!! And then he went nuts modifying the few things I hadn't! Slipper/Assist clutch with a billet basket, Lightech chain adjusters, FJR footpegs. And he replaced the airbox, getting one from a wreck, and it ended up coming with a high performance filter. The reason for the airbox is because now he was back to my initial problem. The Idle. Sometimes it's fine. Sometimes it hangs high, like 2.5-3k, and then drops low, like 800. Most of the time it drops low. So he replaced the airbox, went over the vac system and found THREE MORE BROKEN VAC CAPS. Rebalanced the throttle bodies. Checked the clutch switch. Tried the other ECU. No luck. Fast forward to a couple weeks ago. I started a new work rotation, 50 mile commute round trip, mostly freeway. That is JUST inside the range of the Zero riding a little slower than I prefer (still around 80mph). I have Level 2 chargers at work, and installed one at home. So I'd charge at work in the morning, and charge at home overnight. But the Zero is not made for high(ish) speed, long(ish) distance commutes followed by charging. Mornings weren't bad, since it's the coolest part of the day (haha, 90F right now), but evenings were rough. About 110F-115F rough. So sometimes I'd have to wait an hour in the morning before the Zero was cool enough to charge. But I was waiting SIX HOURS to charge at night, and throttled the charging down to 3.3kW instead of 6kW. Kind of a pain. So I started looking for a new FJ-09. When I told my BIL about it, he said he didn't really need the FJ anymore, and was riding the S1000R more. Awesome! I took a bus out there (Southern California) last weekend, and rode the bike back same day, 330 miles. I had some idling issues when filling up the first couple times, and was running Techron additive in the tank. And NO issues on the freeway. I think I did 95-105mph most of the way home and it just purred. No idling issues by the time I got home. But the last week of commuting shows there's still the idle issue. It's weird, because 30ish percent of the time it's fine, and it's always fine when cold. Most of the rest of the time it goes low. Occasionally it goes high and then always drops low. Sometimes it stalls. If I crack the throttle just a little bit it's rock steady at 1200rpm. I have a service manual now, and there's not much for idling. I've checked the the ISC code (01: check intake system) and reset it. Other suggestions are valve clearance/timing. I'm hesitant to do that since it was done by one shop and verified by another, but I may get there eventually. I've got some Ring-Free on the way to see if it's as magic as some forums say it is. Next I think I'll look at the fuel pump. Then probably valves. So anyway, I'm back on the FJ and loving it, idle problems and all. It's just way more fun than the Zero. It also feels waaaaay better in corners, despite the lower CG and much higher quality suspension of the Zero. Go figure.

Suspicious about how well the boots were sealing up. He bought one from a wrecked bike for cheap, so basically got a discount premium air filter.

The livewires are interesting, and the new ones are at least better than the Zeros on paper for the money. I hope they do well. I think Revzilla did a review on a Zero as a cold weather commuter? And it did well! The only issue I’ve noticed when it’s cold (40F for Phoenix) is a range reduction, up to 20%. Something about the li-ion chemistry. So, poor range in the winter and poor charging in the summer 😂 I really hope fusion becomes a more common technology. I know they’re going to take our gasoline away eventually, and the current battery tech just isn’t the answer.