TE511 hard starts

I have a 2012 TE 511 I bought lasy year, new old stock. Parked it over the winter, went to start it up last month and it cranked for a very long time before it would start. Warmed the bike up and tried to start it again, same thing.

Once the bike starts it runs fine, just doesnt want to start. cold or hot starts, no difference. needs to crank a ton of times. Anyone have suggestions?

Have you read my postings about my difficult to start 2008 TC 510? We may be in the same boat; We've had it taken apart and put back together several times and we can't find what is wrong. The stator is the next thing we are going to look at.

These bikes seem to love good strong batteries.
Best bet is a Lithium battery like an SSB or Earth-X, they have much better cranking speed than the standard lead-acid units. Both these units have inbuilt management electronics & don't require special chargers or treatment as compared to lead-acid.
If you haven't already, it would be a good idea to drain the fuel & add fresh stuff as well. Fuel does go off when sitting around.

Yeah, an earth x is on the list.

At cold start the bike smells flooded, like its over fueling on start up. If I hold the throttle open 1/4 it spins the engine quicker and fires up after a while. I did drain the tank yesterday and changed the gas, it actually starts better when warmed up but the cold start still sucks.

I removed the secondary butterfly, at the end of last season. Never had a chance to run it due to first snow fall, wonder if that may have something to do with it. Going to put it back in this week to see if it makes a difference.

Been thinking it may be a dirty injector but the bike runs great once it fires up, so that doesn't make sense to me.

Thanks for your thoughts guys. Paul S, I'll try and find your thread on poor starting TC 510.

Iridium spark plug ND IU27a

regardless of the plug the hard start just happen , it is clearly flooded when it does start. smokes and stinks of raw gas. I'm thinking that its dumping to much fuel in at start. What controls the injector at start up?

Even when it's at operating temperature it starts hard, just not as hard as total cold start..

I did a couple of things to the bike prior to storage for the winter, don't see how either would have this kind of affect.

1) reset the exhaust valve clearance from .008 to .013
2) removed the secondary butterfly - (I'm going to install this back in the bike to see f it makes a difference)

Going to run some injector cleaner through the engine, see if that helps at all. like I mentioned in an earlier post the bike runs fine when it started. that's why I'm not convinced its the injector.

thanks for your input.

Been a few people with failed temp sensors.
They are relatively cheap and easy to change.
A good place to start.
That is how the ecu senses the motor temp to decide to run the cold start mapping or not.
Also check the plug itself for corrosion / contact.

Which exhaust silencer do you have on it and which map on your ecu?

Tinken, I had your team re-flash the ECU last year. I ran great after the re-flash very few flame outs after. I installed a FMF silencer last year and the bike ran even better!

I took the air box off and looked down the throttle body when I was attempting a start and the fuel visibly 'poured' into the engine. I'm going to try running some injector cleaner through it in tomorrow.

I'm going to check the function of the engine temp sensor tomorrow as well, my I ran into something like that on my hayabusa once. The engine temp and intake air temp sensor have the same connector. cross them up and the engine runs richer and richer as the engine warms up.

Thanks for your input guys,

Does the fuel spray in or squirt a thick stream? It's possible you have clogged your fuel injector, but you will have to check your bag filter in the lower fuel tank. Normally you cannot clean a plugged injector, you have to send it out to be cleaned.

Tinken and others, I've got more questions. These are around my recent exhaust valve re-shim and on-going hard starts.

1) When adjusting valve clearance you turn the engine till the reference marks on the cams are parallel to the cylinder head. In my service manual this is referred to as "Ignition TDC" . Is this the same as TDC of the piston? Other engines I've worked on use the piston TDC as the absolute reference point.

2) How is TDC of the piston established if you've lost the cam reference? Right now I've got a tig rod resting on the top of the piston and I bump the engine (tuning it with the rear tire and transmission in gear) and watch for the tig rod to "dwell" at the piston TDC. This is a pretty crude way of determining TDC but it is obvious to me that the cam reference marks do not align parallel to the cylinder head when the piston is at TDC. See below image where the piston is pretty close to TDC and the cams are miss-aligned.

3) What does the crank shaft securing tool look like and how does it engage with the crank shaft? I treaded a allen bolt in the treaded hole in the crank case as per instruction and brought it up finger tight thinking it engaged with a flat spot or notch on the crank. Maybe I messed up on this step.

4) I zap strapped the intake cam to the chain and marked the exhaust cam to a chain link to ensure it didn't jump a link when pulled the cams . Could the chain have jumped a tooth on the bottom drive sprocket? Is there room for it to do this in the casing?

I think jumping a tooth and not having the cam marks aligned at piston TDC could answer my terrible start up issues. let me know what you or others think. It back fires through both the throttle body and exhaust. When it fires it runs fine on the street, has problems re-starting even once warm.

Thanks,

Laurence

As long as the cam lobes are facing AWAY from the valves, as opposed to contacting the valves, the one or two tooth camchain mismatch will not effect valve setting measurements.

However, if this IS where the engine is at TDC, the sprocket marks should line up & could be the cause of poor running/starting.

The securing pin is a threaded bolt with a machined tip on it to locate in an indent in the crank.
You could confirm your TIG rod TDC by holding a small Phillips screw-driver in the hole against the crank & feeling for the indent as you roll the engine over slowly.
That would confirm your TDC method & if the marks are still out on the sprockets, release the chain & move them back to the correct location.

thanks dangermouse449. I did just that, confined my tig rod tdc with a Phillips screw driver into the indent. The cam marks are out by what appears to be one too, I'll correct this in the coming days, will keep you posted.

That should sort it then. Cool.

yeah, that was it. out one tooth. starts well now.

Awesome.

When it started did it run rough when out by one tooth? If I manage to start my bike, it will run well until the tank runs dry, and then I may not get it started again until it decides it wants to.

It was super hard to start, hot or cold. Once it started it ran well, on test rides it power wheelied , accelerated, didn't stall or miss-behave. I did a number of things to the bike over the winter so I looked over the easy stuff before I revisited the cams. Plus, I thought I was careful doing this critical job.

The lesson I took away from this is no short cuts. I though I locked the crank with a standard allen bolt threaded into the crank case finger tight but was mistaken. I machined a taper into the allen bolt and locked it in the second time. I also double checked that everything was correct by establishing actual TDC and checking cam alignment. For this I used a tig rod and eye balled it.

Next time I'll be much more careful. I wasted 4 hours of riding time screwing with this!