Longmont Co, Flooding

[J.ellwanger]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=492CIvBZMI8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DROpPDNDpY

 22yrs in Colorado, never seen this before, also
   had to be the dumb one and ride my not so legal K5 from Frederick to Longmont, about 30 min drive under normal conditions, took me an hour and a half, cutting back, farm roads that were not washed out, avoiding cops,
 and National Guard, hitting several deep spots where the water was to my knees riding the bike,
   Finally I got to Longmont, almost got to where i needed to be, hit another flooded road, started going down the road, got a little more than half when i found the part that submerged the bike completely... before i got it shut off, it sucked water in,  oops!!! but i knew it was part of the deal stepping out like that during flooding.
 got it pulled apart, and drained all the water, but no carb cleaner, so i couldn't get the small spots.
  but managed to start the bike with OUT the carb... (and oddly it didn't run away!!!)  just idled, for about 3-4 secs.
   
  reason i tell this is because now I'm curious to know if there is any MAJOR stuff to be worried about... checking the oil tomorrow, to see if anything got inside it, and its probably time for a change. but i got the water out, its fired and ran, shortly,

[motopunk]

oh oh this flood looks real bad.. 

  the old cz-engines and my old 2000 gasgas ec300 had all a drainplug under the crank . for the case of flooding ..  2 times it was very useful for me in enduro-races with water-rides ...opened the drain-plugs at crank an carb .looking for water in the exhaust some kicks without sparkplug to bring the big amount of waterdrops out and i could ride again after 15 minutes ... many guys there had the bikes turned upside-down for water-draining out of the sparkplug hole..looked a little bit funny . 

in case of riding in water is important that the water-level stays lower than airbox . so the engine sucks nothing ... 

[J.ellwanger]

yeah, it screwed up all of north Colorado, roads are gone, parks are destroyed, there was a in ground pool that has disappeared, snack bar and all, chunk of land that it sat on is gone. semi trailers logged under bridges, 40 ft trees logged into foot brides where there is usually 15' of clearance under neath it. during the rush of it you could see 8*8*6 slabs of concrete TUMBLING in the river...   
                                                               

  and cool, i thought it was just draining water out, but few friends and I could not get it started,
    pulled the spark plug, pulled the exhaust off, pulled the carb, dumped everything, dried the plug, and could not get it, I'm gonna pull carb again tomorrow and hit it with carb cleaner.  and few other details, not sure what exactly, probably do more than needed... because I'm OCD or some weird disease those doctors came up with.
 

[motopunk]

it needs only one big waterdrop on the sparkplug-electrode , that it canīt ignite the gas in the cylinder...
 make also sure that your ignition system is 100% dry ... 

[J.ellwanger]

yeah. i have pulled everything, air filter, spark plug, exhaust, gas tank, Carb, air box ruber boot,

 Air Filter: still full of water, rang it out, dried, re oiled,

 Spark Plug: water down golden ring, (jetting is good) cleaned and dried,
     kicked the engine over several times as well with plug in boot, against head to avoid ruining the system,
 
 Exhaust: drained.
 
 Gas tank: emptied, to check for water in the gas.
 
 Carb: Pulled apart, sprayed,
 
 Air Box: thoroughly cleaned as i had an 1/8 inch of dirt in the bottom, now looks new, pulled the rubber boot, and cleaned the crap out of it.

 all back together, got it started, forgot to take the choke off, running real rough, had a hard time getting it to get moving then it just died. now i cant get it started, like the plug isn't even firing, hmmm
 moving on to the mentioned Ignition system...  how did i miss that? cant just get spark from nowhere. going to check that now!
  also i was able to get one pic. then phone found rain, now no pics... kcuf

[J.ellwanger]

so cleaned everything again, and got it to actually start, ROUGHLY drive through my neighbor hood,
 so now I'm thinking where else could water be??
   at the very bottom of the crank!??! possibly?
so now i guess I'm gonna drain oil, and pull the tank,  and put it upside down for tonight.

[J.ellwanger]

crap!! so worried bout getting it running i forgot about the oil....


  I see tomorrow already.
fill with oil, run it, ride it very shortly, oil change.
fill with oil, run it, ride it shortly, oil change.
fill with oil, run it, ride it shortly, oil change.
fill with oil, run it, ride it, oil change.
fill with oil, run it, ride it, oil change.
fill with oil, run it, ride it, oil change.
 and just to be safe
fill with oil, run it, ride it, oil change.
 

[jBernard]

thats 2% milk, the problem is that it should be skim instead. everyone knows this. 

[J.ellwanger]

Ha ha i like that!!!
 thanks for the smile!! i needed it after these past couple days, its still raining, and getting worse over here, and my transport is down. ever see a big tree just fall because the ground is         just                                            gone?

[J.ellwanger]

so its still running really rough...
 like VERY rich. just boggy.  like water is still some where. even after this

[sandblaster]

Did you pull the stator cover off and see if it's dry?
If it's wet get out the WD-40 and soak it down.

[motopunk]

Did you pull the stator cover off and see if it's dry?
If it's wet get out the WD-40 and soak it down.

thats what i said some posts earlier: "make sure that the whole ignition system is dry!! "  

little private history: in spring 96 i bought my first 250 and this bike had eaten sparkplugs like candy in the first days and it felt also like to rich jetted...
first i had no idea why. then i thought to go to our local kawasaki-dealer for measuring the ignition. took off the statorcover and it was half filled with water only from cleaning by the pre-owner. after drying the bike, it ran strong and i used only one sparkplug till i sold it for my next following ktm.
and since this time i take off the stator-cover after every cleaning!!!  

[J.ellwanger]

...sorry Motopunk, i didn't see that..
   so the ignition looks dry, was gonna pull the fly wheel but cant bug the bolt,
 so i just spray and leave it? or blow it out?

[motopunk]

nobody is perfekt... 

good idea... pull the flywheel , blow water it out with compressor or use careful a heatgun. then let it stay open for one or two days...
also check all wires and connections  also cdi and coil... 

[ID KX500]

Sorry to see that much distruction