Just got my son a (i believe its an 2003, thought may be an 04) predator 50. Unit starts up with out much trouble and runs well when driving. However, when you stop giving it throttle the engine just stalls and dies. Starts right back up again, but if you dont feather the gas a little it will die.
I changed the spark plug and air filter tonight in hopes of fixing it but it still does it. I have the governor toggled all the way down for him while he learns, so i tried to open taht up a bit more thinking maybe it was down too much, that didn't fix it either. From what I read sounds like maybe the carb needs cleaned? any other thoughts or suggestions on how hard it is to clean the carb on this unit?
Thanks

 

Make sure you don't have too much slack at the thumb lever or the etc contacts can touch and kill the machine. 1/8" slack only at the lever. If that doesn't help then check fuel flow to the carb. If it's good then you may need to clean the jets. Use some stabilizer to keep fuel fresh and to slow down effects of ethanol.

 

Plus plenty of videos on carb cleaning. All the 50/90 Sportsmans,Scramblers,Predator 2 stroke carbs are the same.Early models had the electric choke,later models had the manual choke.

 

thanks for your reply. i'll look into those things.

another question i had was when replacing the spark plug i noticed it looked like the end of the old spark plug was stuck inside the boot, looking at a diagram it looks like its called the terminal nut part of the plug was stuck inside the boot. I briefly tried to get it out but it appeared it was fairly stuck so not wanting to damage it i left it in the boot. I untwisted the terminal nut from the new plug and just installed. Though i'm sure its not the proper way, is that the proper way or was that part indeed stuck inside the boot?

 

Probably just corroded from water and rust. Try some Liquid Wrench or PB Blaster and see if you can get it out with a small pick or needle nose pliers. If you can't without damaging the plug cap,just leave it in there.If you can't screw the plug into it and pull it out,threads are probably stripped.

 

the picture on the left is what i had to do. again i thought it was strange i had to remove the tip because on all the plugs i've ever changed I've never had to do that. So i figured it was stuck in the boot. I tried briefly with needle nose but it was kind of breaking some of it off in the boot so i said forget it i don't want to ruin it if its supposed to be like that.
thanks for the clarificaton

 

Can't remember if the plug cap was designed for the bare end or not (getting old and senile) but really doesn't matter as long as the plug has good contact and good spark.