Flooded 1980's 175cc dirtbike

[jcmars44]

Background:

I am currently living in Costa Rica and have bought my first motorcycle, an old 1980's Yamaha 175 cc dirt bike. Everyone tells me this is a great bike, sufficient power, and the parts are easy to find.

The problem is that the bike will not start. My mechanic has told me the gas valve (llave de gasolina en español) needs to be replaced and possibly the float bowl so that the engine doesn't flood every time I kick start it. The only way I can get it running is to push it down the road with the clutch in second. To compound the problem, we just had a major rain storm and when I tried to push start it, water was coming out of the muffler.

Questions:

1. Are there any methods to starting the bike when the gas valve doesn't work and the engine gets flooded.

2. Is this problem with the water coming out of the muffler simply a matter of waiting for it to evaporate or could this be a more serious problem.

I have tried everything I know to get answers to these questions and I pray someone at this forum can help me seeing is how my Spanish is only adequate and my knowledge of motorcycles is about half as good as that.

Gracias,

John

[mtalicarox]

I don't know the answer to number 1 or 2.. but on ur second question - water comes out the tailpipes of cars all the time.. i don't know the reason, but Ive definitely noticed it.. so I don't know if thats anythign bad nless it goes REALLY far into the exhaust and gets into the engine or soemthign, but someone moer mechanicallyh inclined can probably hep you better..

PS.. why are you in costa rica?

[Rickster]

The float in the bowl isn't something that usually goes bad, but the needle valve that's attached to the float is another matter. It's real comon for needle valves to get deformed, needing replacement, (it's a easy, and cheap) , or it just might have something like a speck of dirt stuck to it, keeping it from completly shuting off the gas flow, in wich case, you would just need to clean it. It's also possible that the float is out of adjustment, also easy to fix, but you need to know the proper setting, a repair manual would be real helpful for this, and any other problems that might come up.

It's also not comon for the petcock (fuel shutoff) to go bad, this is also easy to check, just disconect the hose running from the gas tank to the carb, and see if gas still runs out when it's shut. If the gas doesn't flow when it's shut, than it's fine.

You should never have water comming out of your exhaust. If I remember right, those old dirt bikes usually had an upswept pipe on them, chances are, it got some rain in it. You should try and keep this from happening, but if you get it out right away, it shouldn't hurt anything. If you can get it running, the heat from the exhaust will dry it out fine. If you can't get it running, you might want to take the pipe off, and dump it out. To keep this from happening in the future, you can just put a plastic bag over the exhaust when it looks like rain. Be sure to let the pipe cool first, if you have been running it.