Hi all, I'm new to this forum, but it has come highly recommended by my riding buddy... so here goes.

I bought a 1987 EX500 a little over a month ago, and it has been running great! ... until today. All of the sudden the bike has started to stall with no warning. I'll be going down the road, and boom, it stalls. It will start up a few seconds later, but still this is no fun. At first it was happening during "warm up", so I gave the bike a little more choke to have it run higher rpms; I thought the problem might be too low of an idle speed (is ~1,500 too slow by the way?), but it still would stall every so often. But the problem has moved from the warm up period to riding, so I'm a little nervous. What I happen to see once is that the bike will "hiccup" if you will, the tack drops (with no apparent flickering of the lights), then the engine dies... I don't know if that is a logical series of events, but that is what seems to happen. One thing I was thinking was that I replaced my front "golf clubs" with flush mounts today... could this all be a short circuit problem, and if so is there a way to test other than putting the old signals back on?

Again, this just started happening today, and beforehand the bike was running superbly. I don't mind taking the bike to a shop, but I'm not sure how much I trust these guys yet, and I don't want to get screwed... so if there is something I can do myself first I would love to hear about it. Sorry for the long post, but I hope the info was helpful. Thank you very much in advance for your help, and I look forward to your replies.

Thanks!

~ rick

 

Sorry, one other minor thing I forgot to mention...

The turn indicator lights on the dash/instrument panel (I don't know what the proper name is), they are dimly lit now all the time, but still flash when the signal is on... before they were always either completely off or flashing... no backlight.

Don't know if that makes any difference.

~ rick

 

did you get three wire lights? How did you wire them in? If this started only after you changed out the lights, sounds like you may be shorting out somewhere.

 

Your idle speed sounds fine, mine idles around the same. Like Remo said, if this has started happening after you put the flush mounts on, then it probably has something to do with that. Instead of just putting the old ones back on, recheck your wiring. Good luck fixing it, keep us posted on your progress.

 

Thanks for the help so far... I'm going ot go check out the wiring again right now (I'm starting to have second thoughts about it), and if that doesn't work it's out with the muti-meter - and some help from my pops - to figure out what the heck is going on. I'll let you all know how it turns out... thanks again!

~ rick

 

Ok, so now I'm at a big standstill... literally. I checked all the wiring leads, and they were done correctly as per the wiring directions. I also checked all the leads with a multimeter to check for a short somewhere in the works... everything checked out. In an effort to rule out something really strange going on with the new lights, I disconnected the three light leads for each front turn signal, unplugged the two leads for the rear signals (since i rearranged the spacer placement the same day), and tried to start the bike to see if we still had the same problem. Sure enough the bike started, but after about 3-5 minutes of idling, simply stalled. I restarted the bike, and within 3 minutes it stalled again.
I've talked with a mechanic at a local shop, but I'm wondering if based on what I have explained so far anyone has any ideas on what this problem may be linked to... I welcome any/all feedback.

Thanks a lot,

~ rick

 

Hey man, I've got a 97 ninja 500 and I'm having the same problem. It was running fine and now when i start it up after a few minutes it just stalls out. What ended up being the probem?