When I was unloading my V Force the other night I fired it up and road it towards the garage, when I was almost to the door it started missing. The next evening I pull the front spark plug wire off and was running only on the rear cylinder. So the front cylinder was not firing, I pull the plug and connected a new plug and cranked it over. No problem with the spark, so popped a new plug in and tried to start it up. It still wouldn't fire on the front cylinder. So I took off the air cleaner and cranked it again, there was gas spraying up from the front carb. I took it to the shop this morning and there is no compression on the front cylinder and it has some valve noise indicating that the valve problem. After removing the head the dealer found that one of my airbox bolts had vibrated loose and was sucked down through the carb and stuck under the intake valve.

I am not sure what caused this problem, but I would strongly suggest that you re-torque you carb bolts and maybe use some blue locktite on them and possibly check them after you transport the machine on long trips. I am also thinking about fabricating a thin plate out of 0.020 alum. that fits barley under the edges of the air filter and maybe some dimples where the carb bolts are located to keep it in place and keep the bolts in place even if they should come loose I will be checking my 700 Prairie to see if the same problem could happen on it as well! Maybe Kawi will come up with some screens that will keep foreign objects out of the air intake holes to prevent this in the future.

I will post some pic's on my website of the solution that I come up with, after I get my V Force back from the dealer. If any of you have had a problem similar to this I would appreciate some input or other possible solutions!

Alan[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-sad.gif[/img]

 

Wow, that sucks Alan. Your bike is still under warranty isnt it? I'm not sure which bolts you're talking about.

 

I think Kawi is going to fix it under warranty!

In the air box there is some bolts that fasten the box to the carbs. They are on the inside of the filter chamber, you can see them when you take the lid off to clean your filter! The problem is if anything gets loose inside the box its going to go straight down one of your carbs! I think it is a design problem, there should be some kind of domed screen or something over the intake holes in the box! I am going to check my Prairie tomorrow to see if it is the same setup!

I rode it a bunch at Glamis last weekend and the only thing I can think of is the bolt vibrated loose on the 600 mile trip home!

Alan[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-frown.gif[/img]

 

Ok, now I know which ones you're talking about. I'm definately going to check mine and loctite them this weekend. I appreciate the info and the heads up on a potential problem[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-sad.gif[/img]

 

Make sure you don't use anything permanent like red loctite, Use just a little dab of blue!

Alan

 

Similar situation happend with my old Prairie 650. Mechanic thought it was a bearing bad. Tore the whole motor apart and replaced a lot of stuff including the bearings. Nine weeks later put back together and was making same noise, like a rock tumbling. Turns out to be a screw from the carbs got inside and was making the noise. I was extremely pissed. Dealer sold me a Praire 700 for cost and took my quad (gave top dollar) in on a trade. I was able to remove my mods off the old 650 first.
Could you put nylon stockings over the carbs opening?

 

I just took mine apart because I stripped the last screw rying to rejet my carb. The bolts had red lock tight on them already...

 

Sounds like they already new a problem was abrewin....huh?..I sense a conspiracy. Im going to have to check mine.

 

I just checked my 700 Prairie and 2 of the bolts were loose! The air box has never been off, it only has 26 hours on it according to the readout on the speedometer! All of 318 miles, my wife really gives it hell as you can see! 12.23 average

We really need to come up with a fix for the potential problem! How about some ideas from you guys!


Alan

 

very interesting....i had the same scenario with my v shortly after it got broke in...i also replaced the front spark plug after verifying it had spark.....i could then get it to run but only on one cylinder.....i fussed with it for a day and then took it to the shop, that had it for a month.....they blamed this on water in the system, my v hasn't run right since and i still have a miss in it every so often. Nothing was covered under warranty, they said they found nothing but replaced the sparkplugs

i never even got the bike back until i called and threatened to make kawasaki make my payments since they were dragging their *** on it...the next day the shop called and said it was done.....i'm thinking i got raped on that deal