TZR won't start... backfires.

[Snorty]

I'm going to give a brief history of my bike beforehand as this may have a bearing on the problem...

TLDR at the bottom

I bought my bike back in March last year, was very happy with it, ran fine etc.

Stupidly, I forgot to fill up the 2T autolube tank... the bike just cut out on me one day when riding, and I looked in horror at the empty 2T tank...

So anyway I sent my bike off to get looked at, as there was a horrible rattle coming from it, naturally. Got it rebuilt and it was running fine again.

After running the bike in, I would take the bike on 190 mile round trips to the east coast and back (from leeds). On one of my journeys back, I was doing about 70 and the back wheel locked up on me... So I took it to the garage that rebuilt it, and apparently the piston had melted.... so they replaced that for me. (this was around summer time).

In November, I noticed the back was having trouble idling, so I had to keep revving it when I got stuck at lights, one set of lights was at red for ages, and I noticed I had to keep the bike above 3k otherwise it was bogging down and dying, due to this, I noticed the temperature was rising rapidly, and after setting off, the bike conked out and wouldn't start again.

After this, I got a new piston put in, but there has been a very slight rattle, doesn't increase in frequency at higher revs, but quietens when accelerating.

Not having the money to get this looked at, and with it not affecting the performance at all, I left it. Still wouldn't idle by itself at this point, I had to maintain it at around 1500 with throttle.

About a week ago, I was riding at about 70, and the bike just died, like when it runs out of fuel, and I could not kick it over for the life of me, so I sat hopeless at the side of the road for a while, before I decided to try bump it off downhill, with success.

After this, the bike wouldn't start without being bumped off, but I had to get to work, etc... so just had to put up with it. However I went to bump it off before the weekend, and it backfired, sounded like a gun shot! It started in the end though, until it conked out again, as if it had run out of fuel. This time it wouldn't start and just backfired constantly.



Any help would be much appreciated, sorry for the long post...

[robocog]

Don't know the inner workings of the TZR...however

Several symtoms sound like they could be timing related
if the timing was wrong it would certainly be unwilling to fire up, be a general pig to start and when you did there would be every chance it would be igniting the charge too late in the cycle and would cause a backfire

If the timing was off, it could also fit that temps would be wrong (glowing headers etc)

...not sure how the timing is done on your machine, but if its a CDI being triggered by a pickup coil counting or getting a pulse from a notch on the flywheel, a rattle AND timing being off /could/ be a symptom of a sheared woodruff key causing the timing to have slipped

Not saying that is what it is but...
Worth sticking a timing strobe light and pointing it at timing marks if you have em and would rule it out without having to buy gaskets and disturb stuff

Regards
Rob
____________________
Needs a bigger garage...