I work part time at a shop that does custom paint and plastic repairs, gas tank repairs on Italian and Japanese motorcycles. It is all we do, with the occasional clutch, stator, or (begrudgingly)put a "skretched" swing arm on a Busa. We specialize in mainly cosmetic stuff though.


A little while back our local sheriff's office sold us an 09 GSXR 600. It had been in a police chase and was dropped off the road in to a ditch. The plastic was destroyed and the swing arm was broken at the welds. It was confiscated immediately. We picked the bike up for next to nothing and rebuilt it front to back with OEM parts. Not knock off ebay fairings and certainly not a second hand swing arm and suspension. Once the bike was done we started it up and ran it. The bike had no exhaust on it. It ran and the header got hot. It glowed red, I did some research and found out that it is not uncommon for the newer GSXR headers to do that if you have a rich or lean condition as the headers are made of thin metal. The bike fouled the plugs and quit running. So we replaced them and fired it back up. It ran fine but shot flames out of the mid pipe. Once again it quit running. I was not present when this all happened. I showed up a day later and inquired about the bike being ready to go. Well, I got the story I just gave you. So I took the old plugs and cleaned them up. I then dropped them back in the motor. I hooked everything up and tried to start it. The bike turns over just fine, but it will not fire up. I mean, it does not even attempt to fire off. It just spools away. I told my buddy that it should not be ran without exhaust as it does not have a tune for being ran in such a way.


Tomorrow I am going to check and see if I have spark. If I do not I am going to check and see if the coil packs are getting power. From what I can tell everything on the bike is connected as it should be. We do get a lot of wrecked GSXR bikes to fix. So we are very familiar with the wiring and the configuration of things under the tank. I found it weird that the bike will not fire up and at least sputter with the old plugs since I cleaned them up really well. If any of you have any input please give it to me. I am aware it should not be ran without any exhaust. I have verified that it is getting gas to the injectors. So I do not have an air bubble in the system. The bike did not run lean without exhaust, it ran rich. The headers got glowing hot because they had unburned raw fuel igniting in them. If any of you know something I may have missed or can give me some type of information specifically about the GSXR system. Please let me know. I would appreciate it. I have a guy interested in the bike and need to get it ready for him. I will not sell something that does not work perfectly.

 

Were all of the headers glowing red? If it was just one, I'd worry about a sticking/leaking injector. If its all of them, then I'd say a sensor may be wrong. Does that gixxer use an o2? Or is it just using a MAP and IAT?

Are there any codes being thrown?

I've cleaned spark plugs and have gotten them to work again, but I've also been in situations where even newer plugs are just fouled and won't come back.