2004 280 TXT Pro Incredibly Hard Starting: Bad Stator

[unclejosh]

Guys,

My leg has finally healed after 1,000 kicks kicks or so - traced my hard starting issue, and wanted to share and spare others the pain.

Symptoms: random hard starting, no rhyme or reason, extremely difficult using any and all techniques espoused on this forum. WORSE when hot.

Tried both Keihin and DellOrto, jetting changes to no effect.

Spark looked OK.

Tracing the issue: isolated the problem by swapping in Ducati stator from my buddies bike, and voila, bike starts 2nd to 3rd kick, choke on, no throttle. After that, slightest whiff of throttle when hot.

Had my stator rewound for $70.00 US by Tim Parrott Enterprises, with 1-year guarantee. Google him, very easy to work with.

I have since found out that this is a relatively rare failure, but, happened to me before with a Kokusan stator on my old GG EC300. That was a fun one too, 100s of kicks in the Mojave desert and an occasional random start. Got hot, then impossible to start.

Hope this helps......or serves as food for thought.

Regards,

unclejosh in Cali

[outlaw dave]

Thanks for posting - do you have a link for Tim Parrot?

[unclejosh]

http://www.tpe-usa.com/

[unclejosh]

Here are some more tips re. troubleshooting a stator issue, that might help others in need, I have had a few questions offline, so here it goes:

1) Many bad stators will show fault only when hot, or get alot worse - the heat expansion can cause the open circuit or partial open circuit or shorting fault.

2) A spark still may show when kicking - the RPM created with the plug outside the cylinder may be enough to generate a spark. But when screwed in, the compression retards the RPM generation which can greatly weaken or eliminate the spark, because you cant spin the motor up sufficiently...this can cause head scratching, as you might imagine.

The best way to trace a bad stator is swap in a new one from a buddies bike in my experience..........

Have fun ridin,

UJ

Edited September 20, 2011 by unclejosh