• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

TE 450 Bogging and leaning out- it will only tick over now.

Tetley

Husqvarna
AA Class
Yesterday my FI TE450 started bogging at low revs. This bogging and leaning out gradually got worse until the bike was virtually unrideable. It lost huge amounts of power, and was running so lean it would badly missfire with any throttle openings unless the revs were high. The baffles were glowing bright orange at one stage! normally they are black and sooty, as the 'power up' fuelling is rich.
After a roadside strip down to check for wiring rub throughs, shorts, water etc, and changing the plug, the bike would only tick over. Any throttle or load would kill it dead. So a 45 mile tow back to the van was needed, and it ticked over all the way!
Today I checked the pump - 44psi when running, and 40psi when not, which held and did not leak away. The pressure built quickly, so pump seems ok.
I checked the wiring, and there is continuity from the ECU to all the sensors. I checked for shorts within the wiring and there are none.
I checked the air temp sensor, and it was showing 2750 ohms at ambient temp, and the resistace dropped to 2300 Ohms when I put my finger on it.
I checked the coolant temp sensor by disconnecting it, and it made it run worse (which was expected, as the limp value is leaner than the starting value), virtually unable to start it.
I checked the injector off the bike, but plugged in, and pulses of fuel were coming out. When opening the throttle the fuel flow increased. I wired the injector up to 12V, and ran it continuously and got 2 jets of fuel out of it. It is a 4 hole injector, but it seems that 2 jets combine to from 2 jets firing directly at each inlet port. Is this right? And can any more checks be made, eg flow rates?
I do not know how to check the manifold pressure sensor or the throttle position sensor without i-beat, does anyone know how?

I cannot afford to buy i-beat, its nearly £800 here in the UK, which is an obscene price to pay for a tool just to find out what's wrong before forking out more on parts. The nearest dealer is too far away to be practical to take the bike in.

Has anyone else had the same problems, and what was the cure, and any more tips on manually fault finding without using i-beat?
 
Inlet manifiold fine and replaced last year as it had got badlly perished.
The engine would tick over, but wasn't even able to pull the bike along in first gear on the flat without stalling.
I ran the engine during the tow so I had full lights, brake light and a horn to signal to the towing bike.
 
Inlet manifiold fine and replaced last year as it had got badlly perished.
The engine would tick over, but wasn't even able to pull the bike along in first gear on the flat without stalling.
I ran the engine during the tow so I had full lights, brake light and a horn to signal to the towing bike.


So it would idle but not take throttle? just don't know what "tick over" means...
 
'Tick over' is UK speak for idle!
Yes, it got to the stage where it would only idle. Any throttle caused it to rev a bit, lean off, missfire then die.
Our local Husky dealer has told me a common problem with these bikes is, the fuel pump goes slow when hot, so the fuel pressure and flow rate drops off, causing it to lean off.
I need to rig up my pressure guage through a T piece so I can ride the bike and moniter the fuel pressure.
 
OHR, do you think his TPS has gone wacky. Mine went wacky once and was barely able to get it up to temp to connect to ibeat. That's all it was
 
Our local Husky dealer has told me a common problem with these bikes is, the fuel pump goes slow when hot, so the fuel pressure and flow rate drops off, causing it to lean off.
I need to rig up my pressure guage through a T piece so I can ride the bike and moniter the fuel pressure.
This sounds reasonable, when you get the bike hot, and it is running poorly, turn the key off and then back on and listen carefully to the pump as it primes, does it sound labored or slow. You'll need to be very familiar with how the pump sounds when it is cold and spinning freely. When I had a gummed up pump, I could actually hear it turning slower and slower and finally it would not even spin up at all.


OHR, do you think his TPS has gone wacky. Mine went wacky once and was barely able to get it up to temp to connect to ibeat. That's all it was

I've taken my TPS apart to see how it works, and I've sprayed it with water and then WD40 and then electrical cleaner and my bike has 16,000 miles on it, I've never had to reset my TPS. I know that resetting the TPS is a very common suggestion for fixing problems, it's just that I have never had to do it.
 
Check to see what type plug or cap was used to plug the hole on the side of the intake.
Never use a vacuum plug they are usually rubber and will deterioate.
If so remove the stock barb and replace it with a bolt.
Later George
 
Check to see what type plug or cap was used to plug the hole on the side of the intake.
Never use a vacuum plug they are usually rubber and will deterioate.
If so remove the stock barb and replace it with a bolt.
Later George

Great point George, I have been checking mine, and as all these bikes get older, those that still have the rubber cap are gonna start deteriorating and leak air.
 
Pardon my ignorance boys, but whats a 'TPS'? Owner of a '10 450 and prepping for worse case scenarios (if they ever happen ;-)
 
TPS= Throttle Position Senser.
Tells the ECU where the slide or butterfly is in it's position as far as how open it is.
On FI bikes its set with the computer using either the I Beat, or the HST programs.
Later George
 
Pardon my ignorance boys, but whats a 'TPS'? Owner of a '10 450 and prepping for worse case scenarios (if they ever happen ;-)


Here's a pic of the innards, when the throttle cable rotates the butterfly, the circle you see on the throttle body rotates inside the TPS housing(laying down).

HuskyTPSinnards2_zpsfbbd2d3f.jpg
 
Update-

Really annoyingly the bike is now running as it used to!
I borrowed i-Beat and found no fault codes. The only historic ones were tilt sensor (I think that was last year when I had FAIL in the dash for a few hours, but the bike was working perfectly) and coolant temp sensor - this was due to me disconnecting it to see if the bike would run better.
I checked all the live data - temps, pressures, rpm, spark advance, injection duration, throttle position etc and all was fine. The TPS was very slightly out, so I reset it, but that made no difference. All the mixture trims were set to 100%, and the bike is now running rich again as per power up kit.
One odd quirk I did notice, was i-Beat showed total running time of 192 hours. The real running time must be 500+

So, its looking like it's either pump failure, of a blocked or sticking injector. According to my local dealer, there is a filter in the injector, and this can get blocked. So I will dismantle the trottle body and check. Also I will run some injector cleaner through.
I hate intermittent faults :(
 
At last I think I have found the fault!
Using some heat, a no.3 Phillips bit in a socket spanner ratchet, and a LOT of force, I manages to crack off the threadlocked bolts on the fuel gallery.
I removed the injector, and found there is a very small filter in the inlet, which had a very small amount of brown sludge in it - just enought to block the gauze.
I used a very small screwdriver to carefully scrape away the sludge, then jiggled it in fuel to wash the remains out.

Clean again!

WP_20131112_001_zps04c54008.jpg


WP_20131112_003_zps2c429d15.jpg
 
So am I, got 3 days of hard trail riding in the mountains, mines and quarries of South Wales in 2 weeks, that will certainly test it! :)
PS I ordered a CA cycleworks pump as a spare. Gives me peace of mind, the pump has always been my no.1 worry on this bike, as it's not a roadside bodge to get it going again.
 
Thanks Guys, great post. Tip one for Tetley, great find! I spent 30yrs trobleshooting elevators, er.. lifts, on the other side of the pond. We used to have a saying when computerized elevators came out. To find the problem, it either takes 10 mins. or 3 days! Carburetors, Doh!I had a similar problem, turned out to be a loose ground, it's now Loctited. Tetley's problem is a warning, we should add checking fuel filter by pump to our maintainence. Great to hear from George again, still lovin my 08 TE 450 I bought from you.
Hey Older Husky Rider, can you share the part number on the Car Quest fuel pump? Has it worked for you?Thanks.
 
Back
Top