I'm a bit stumped with some fuel issues on my 98 F3. Bike has a DD exhaust and a jet kit. Otherwise stock (so far as I know).

The first problem I noticed was my fuel pump leaking. I decided to seal up the pump and continue to use it while I waited on a new pump. I'm not sure if sealing up the center seam contributed to this but as soon as it was sealed, the pump completely stopped working.

I first decided to gravity feed the bike. This worked... sort of. My idle was rough and low end throttle response was crappy. I went for a short ride and discovered that at random the bike would "run out of fuel" and shut off. I would then have to pull off, choke, start, and it would run again as well as normal for another couple miles before starting the process over again. I babied her home and started thinking about other ideas.

I figured I'd give a shot at a generic auto zone inline fuel pump. I bought the appropriate fittings and plumbed it up. Right off the bat it seemed to work great. Idle was good and it seemed to rev better. I took the bike for a short spin in the neighborhood and didn't get a block when the bike "ran out of gas" again. I managed to get it to continue running but only at WOT and barely even then back to the house. The next day I started it up with the fuel off and it started, cleared out and ran great WITH THE FUEL OFF. That seemed to spell flooded to me so I threw a fuel pressure regulator in front of the pump. With that on there I could only get the bike to run on choke irregardless of where I set the FPR.

I'm at a loss now. I'm planning on cutting my losses and putting a new stock pump on the bike but I thought I would throw this out to the community to see if anyone sees anything I've done wrong in my mass of different ideas that might help me out.

 

Stock pump + check your plugs. They're prolly fouled by now.

 

Good point on the plugs, I don't think that's an issue right now though. I forgot to mention that to check the basics out after I tried the FPR I put it back to gravity feed and it fired right up and ran fine but with a rough idle and hesitation in low RPM's just like it did the first time I gravity fed it.

 

F3's weren't meant to run gravity fed. F2's are gravity fed. But they don't have the ram ducts or jet sizes. You're going to have performance issues prolly in varying degrees based on the condition of your air / fuel systems.

And to be honest, doubt anyone here can be much help diagnosing a system as far out of spec as yours is now. A piped and jetted F3 with an aftermarket fuel pump and a FPR that it never originally had? Gonna be hard to find someone that has any experience in that.

 

Yup. Pretty much figured that would be the case but on the off chance we had some super-tuners lurking around here I figured I'd post it up anyway. The combination of flodded then aparently not supplying enough fuel seemed like something that might be distinct enough to remind someone of their own issues in the past.

As I've said, I think I'll just go with a fresh stock pump even if I am likely to replace it eventually. The system worked and was tuned well with that pump so I know it works.

On that note - anyone have a suggestion of where I should look for a new pump other than the stealership?

 

Brand new pump you can get from places like servicehonda.com or ronayers.com. I went to a local shop and they gave me a used one for $50 that worked fine. FleaBay prolly has a couple used too.

 

Thanks for the advice. I was messing around with my old stock pump in the garage a minute ago and it fired up when I hit it with straight 12V. Wondering if I might have done something stupid when it wasn't working the first time.

Since I had it out I went ahead and finished sealing it up with some JB weld. Going to go out when its dry in a minute and solder the connector back on and clean up the contact to ensure good connection. Maybe if I'm lucky it'll work!

 

Even better, I just got a call back from a local craigslist ad parting a '98. $35 for a new pump, awesome!

 

might want to take a peek at the fuel filter, could be plugging up and restricting flow....just a thought

 

I thought about that but I wasn't having any trouble other than the leak initially so I believe that the filter was OK.

I just got back from picking up a new pump complete with filter so I'll give it a shot with the entire new assembly as soon as I can get a hand installing it. I burnt the crap out of my hand last weekend by accident so I can't do any hard work with it... like say pulling off and putting on fuel lines