After months of power issues, I finally figured it out! It was a huge headache, but I learned so much. I gotta say I missed that torque.
I did some work on the paint while waiting for parts and it’s not perfect, but I love it 😍 finally got the paint to match the green brake lines
Buckle up, because this is a lot and I really don’t know what I’m talking about.
About 6 months ago when merging onto highways after long rides 2+ hours when bike was nice and toasty, I’d get what felt to me like a slipping clutch. It was all about hard acceleration in higher gears, and it got worse with a hot bike for sure. I tested it by putting it in 3rd or 4th gear at 15-20mph and gunning it, and if the bike was warm enough, it’d “slip” and lose power.
Just rode on it for a while, but in prep for a track day in a few months I eventually changed the clutch pack. I didn’t do an excessive amount of hard acceleration, but I was concerned I’d done some damage with a handful of down shifts at way too high RPMs.
Well, changing it did nothing.
My old clutch pack looked alright minus the very back friction disc that’s smaller having a thickeness just out of spec. The steel plates were slightly discolored but not bad. Only thing I wish I had done at that point was change my springs, but all that being said, I don’t think it’s my clutch anyway as symptoms progressed.
I took it for a handful of rides including long ones and still had the same “slipping” loss of power sensation when adding throttle after long rides.
Dang it. But I was just going to ride a bit and replace the springs, thinking that’s it.
Then I was warming up for a ride and it started loosing power in lower gears which it’d never done before. It was only ever acceleration in 3rd and up. I circled the parking lot over and over and eventually the bike threw a F1 code (yay and boo)
I stuck a paper clip in the dealer plug and got a c45 code. Fuel system. Cool.
My fuel pump hit 20ish ml short of the 10 second test, so I pulled it out to inspect. I do not have a pressure gauge that fits on the bike, so I skipped testing that after spraying gas everywhere using a rigged one. Lo and behold, my filter looks like crap. Further inspecting, my gas cap was horribly corroded and raining down into my gas tank.
I replaced filter and gas cap, but 10 second test got worse. Significantly worse. It dropped from about 150 to 50ml. Sweet.
Ordered a fuel pump rebuild kit from allballs. Now it hums nicely, puts out enough fuel.
STILL NOT FIXED
Ive ridden around (perilously) an entire tank of gas with Mechanic in a bottle, hoping to clear whatever crap is in my fuel system. I then realized I can accelerate if I just barely crack the throttle, like not even a 1/4 open. I can get it up to 60mph, but if I open the throttle any further the RPMs plummet to a near stall. Anyway, it didn’t help.
Took the fuel injectors out (stripping a crappy X screw despite having JIS screwdrivers and paying $40 for new ones) and hooked them up to some voltage and blew some Toyota fuel injectors cleaner through them and it blew out a good bit of crap and had an alright spray pattern. Ohms are fine on them.
All that to say, I’m waiting on new screw to install the cleaned out injectors to see if that fixes it, but have also bit the bullet and bought a $200 💀 oem fuel pressure regulator bc according to the service manual, the actual regulator cannot be removed from the plastic. Googling, looks like high risk of cracking and I’m just so done and want to go riding I don’t want to deal with hairline cracks.
So I’ve sunk so much time and money into this and wanted to see if anyone had something to add before I drive this thing into a lake. I saw another post of someone with a 2017 having issues and I believe they used some kind of ultra sonic cleaner on their pressure regulator on the fuel pump and that worked? Someone else on GXR with similar symptoms replaced entire fuel pump (which at this point I wish I’d done, but I have basically made a new one at this point)
Does it make sense that my older symptoms I believed to be the clutch are actually a fuel issue? I don’t see why it’d require the bike to be hot to malfunction? Idk, maybe there are multiple things wrong???
Also checked a sparkle plug and it gapped fine and looked almost whiteish grayish which I’m told means it’s running lean. Also side note, previously have had issues rooted in the cluster of cables for the ignition right below right side of handlebars being cut in an attempted theft with previous owner. Those are all soldered now so hopefully not connected to this issue. Also my clutch cable and the little screw inside the clutch have been adjusted.
Update: cleaned fuel injectors made no difference, fingers crossed for the pressure regulator