02 Xplorer 400 won't start?
 

Some of you probably saw my post from a few days ago when I bought this, but I thought I would start a new post now that I'm troubleshooting to avoid confusing things.

Tonight I pulled the plug and turned the bike over and I'm getting good spark. I need to check compression with a guage, but I put my finger over the plug hole and it seemed to have a good amount of compression. I shot a little starting fluid in the carb, but couldn't get it to fire at all. I held the full throttle and tried to crank for a minute, and it did show signs of wanting to start.

When I pulled the plug several times, it did smell like fuel, and had a little on it, but wasn't saturated.

I'm almost suspecting bad fuel, or maybe a faulty carb. I've heard the two strokes need a good pure fuel and oil mixture to even run. Can anyone confirm this or should I at least be getting small amount of run time when spraying the fluid. Can anyone a little more comfortable troubleshooting a 2-stroke point me in the right direction?

I've got a mechanic lined up to pick up the bike if I can't figure it out, but would rather not turn if over to someone else if I can figure it out myself.

Thanks!

Take the carb off pull it apart give it a good bath in carb cleaner, use compressed air to blow into all the holes you can find. There is tons of good info on the Mikuni carbs online about setting them up for start up once running you`ll have to fun tune it.

Your flooded IMHO.

Pull the plug and crank it over...........a lot to clean out the bottem end. Put the plug back in, give it a shot of ether, hold it wide open and start it.

Pulled the carb and gave it a quick run through with carb cleaner, pulled the plug to clear any fuel that could be flooding, shot the carb with ether, opened the throttle wide open... and nothing. Still getting good fire when plug is grounded, and I couldn't get anything to really happen with ether. I guess I'm going to have to break down and get a new compression guage, since I can't find mine and see what's really going on in the block.

My bet is it is time for a topend job

I have a service manual for a 2001 xplorer 400. Let me know if you need me to look something up or scan a few pages for you.

Well... I had a buddy (atv mechanic) tare into the engine this afternoon, and at first he was thinking just a topend rebuild (60 PSI). The further he got into it, the crank seems to be bad... there's a lot of play in it. Anyone out there pull one of these engine? I've done it in a 500, but this guy seems to think it's a different animal and are harder due to frame? Anyone one have a inexpensive 400 2-stroke engine I can buy. I can always part his out and get plenty of money out of it, but I really hate to do that since it's such a nice bike.

:yup: yup. if you didnt fire it up on starting fluid (even flooded) then no good compression. lol then i just read your 60 psi post. bingo, theres the issue to start with.;)

Get the clutches off and the engine comes out easier than a 500 does.If the cases are good rebuild your 400 right and be safe.

The guy who is helping me seems to think I'll be out an arm and a leg to rebuild... but he's also not real comfortable with Polaris. Can anyone give me a second opinion on what to look for on this engine to see what I'd be looking at to rebuild? The engine is in the bike, but still partially torn down, so if someone could tell me what to look for then I may to try to rebuild myself.