Am I Running on One Cylinder? (or what riding in the rain really did)

Date: Thursday, November 18, 1999 From: Christopher Bibbs It has been the experience of myself, and several other owners of X model SV's (non-fairing), that riding in heavy rain can impair your SV. It seems that the spark plug on the front cylinder is not properly sealed and can allow water to seep in. The symptoms are weak response from the throttle, loss of torque and horse power, and/or lurching under constant throttle. While annoying, this doesn't appear to damage the engine permanently and can be cleared up relatively easily. Method #1 Ride the bike until symptoms go away. This can take awhile (it lasted about 90 minutes for me) and is very annoying. Method #2 Start wrenching. 1) Remove the horn from the front of the bike. Just take off the screws so you can move it out of the way, you don't need to disconnect the wires. 2) Remove the three screws holding the radiator in place. You don't have to remove the hoses, as you can move the radiator a bit with them still attached, though it will make accessing the spark plug a bit harder. 3) Disconnect the wire from the spark plug. 4) Now you can either use a can of compressed air to blow out the water or let it sit and dry up naturally. I use a combination of both, blowing, letting it sit for an hour or so, and then blowing it once more. 5) Put everything back together. 6) Start the bike and let it run for a few minutes, it might make some odd sounds as the front cylinder begins to fire again, don't worry you're almost home. 7) Take it for a test ride and savor the results. Christopher Bibbs QALoad Development Team Compuware