Engine flooding?

[shendo]

Hi everyone,

I just bought a 2001 Buell Blast a couple weeks ago and while I was riding the other day, the bike just completely shut off. When I drifted off to the side, I found that there was gas and some green colored liquid (coolant?) initially leaking out the side of the bike. The green colored liquid seemed only to be in the very beginning, but the gas kept coming out. After walking it to my friend's garage, I took of the shell where the air filter is and it was flooded with gas. Is this an engine flood? Some people said it might be the carb float? I'm pretty new to working on bikes in general so any help would be greatly appreciated. What are some things I should start checking to troubleshoot this?

Thanks,

Shendo

 

[jetlee]

The green stuff was bad gas. It's what happens when gas stays in contact with brass for too long.

As for the flooding...your float got stuck. Give the carb a couple quick smacks with the handle of a screwdriver or with a rubber mallet to try to unstick the float.

Seeing as you had bad gas (essentially turpentine), it would be a good idea to remove the carb and float bowl (NOTHING ELSE) and spray everything out really good with some carb cleaner.

 

[shendo]

Thanks for the help! I'm going to give it a shot after work today and see if it starts up and hopefully unstick the float long enough for me to ride it back to my place so I can clean the carb and float bowl. I'll post back to let you know if it works! Thanks again!

 

[shendo]

So I took off the carb and cleaned (with carb cleaner) just the float needle and notch in the carb where the float needle goes into. When I put everything back together, I my bike was ok in regards to not having any flooding going on, no fuel leakage. BUT, now something weird is going on where my idle is fluctuating like nuts. It almost seems like my throttle is sticking because when I shift down gears and release the throttle even with the clutch held in, it seems like I'm still accelerating pretty hard. Even when I'm at a stoplight in neutral, the idle sometimes is real low and sometimes real high. I have no idea what is going on here, maybe a vacuum leak or something? I thought I had tightened everything and this didn't happen before I got flooded. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Shendo