Won't Start Mystery Solved and general service announcement

[topher0268]

First, I've been on hiatus for awhile so ... how are you all doing????

Now on to business. So at the end of the season last year my 2000 885i dies pulling into the driveway and won't start back up. I park it thinking I'll work on it when I get a chance and finished out the rest of October on the Honda 550f (yeah I have one of those .. eat your heart out). Anyway, how was I supposed to know the kind of winter the Midwest was going to get ... needless to say I'm just now diagnosing the problem ..... 

If you read my other posts you'll know I've had problems with switches in the past so naturally this is the first place I went. Mostly because my lights came on, fuel pump spins up, and starter cranks when clutch is pulled in, and battery tests out fine, I focused on the neutral and side stand switch (AGAIN!!!). This time they were both fine too. I rechecked all my fuses and since the 2000 doesn't have a tip over switch, I went straight the CDI. I have a spare programmed for the tiger so I put it on ..... same thing ... .no vroom vroom 

In speaking to another buddy he chastised me for not checking fuel. But cmon man it has fresh fuel, I can hear the pump spin up, AND I can smell gas (or so I thought). Reluctantly I pulled the tank and sprayed some carb cleaner into the throttle bodies ... fired RIGHT up .... ugh .. ok it's fuel. Maybe clogged filter .......

5 seasons ago when I bought my Tiger, the first thing I did was replace the filter. I used a cross reference part I found here. Here comes the SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT ...... Low and behold what do I find in the tank:



The pump was literally dumping the fuel right back into the tank. Still not sure why it would spin up and stop like it had reached proper pressure but maybe that's a timing thing rather than a pressure thing. The moral of the story is if you're going to use a cross reference part, do yourself a favor and go ahead and buy fuel line you KNOW is submersible because the provided lines clearly were not 

This has been a public service announcement brought to you by the moron that didn't read the box ....... 

[Sin_Tiger]

Good post 

It'll almost certainly have been lack of pressure that's been the issue, that could well be happening on a lot of bikes that age without being so obvious, especially at low RPM when the voltage is lower. I've seen similar happen on diesel engines where the pressure was leaking down between the inner and outer casings.

I think that's a good one to check or change out when you have the tank off.