Massive backfire!
 

What caused this?
Pulled onto a Petrol Station recently & the bike started to chug before cutting out (still a bit of petrol left). I tried to restart it, but it just turned over & over until BANG!! an almighty backfire that echoed all around the forecourt. The kind that makes birds fly out of the trees!
Run OK after that & it's never done it before or since. Any ideas?
BTW, my mates 916 did exactly the same thing on the Isle Of Man this year

My ST2 did it once and blew the throttle bodies off the manifold. That was becasue i used the fast Idle when the engine wasnt cold. Both of my Ducati's have always started without any throttle when they are warm, and with zero throttle and a touch of fast idle when they are cold.

Paul.

Backfire
 

It sounds like you were out of fuel, right?

If this was the case the backfire was caused by a weak fuel mixture, the ratio of air was to high. This causes the fuel mixture to become less stable and will ignite as soon as it enters the cylinder, without or before the spark!

A constant weak mixture can cause over heating, backfires out of the exhaust, though the air intakes which can cause a fire and last but not least engine damage.

A one off is unlikley to cause any damage so don't worry, bet it was loud though.:lol:

sounds like you had a small amount of petrol in your exhaust which ignited, thus causing the back fire.

I used to use the cut off switch whilst riding at 30mph, and start the bike in full motion... causing a flame to come out of the exhaust along with a rather large bang...

Scared of doing this on my duke, for the fear of blowing my nuts off... as well as the exhausts.

However, my duke has never backed fired on me so far?!

:devil:

[Edited on 28-7-2003 by thrustercat]

thrustercat it only does that with carburetted bikes, because they suck fuel in rather than have it pumped in, when you flick the kill switch to off on a FI bike it kills the injectors too.
Pity as it was great for losing those annoying tailgaters!

Lane my 998 backfired like you described on my local highstreet (Ealing Broadway where the bomb went off in August2001)
It was so loud that everyone thought it was another bomb and they all hit the deck :lol:


[Edited on 28-7-2003 by DJTera]

Had my 996 misfire back through the airbox. Thought the fuel tank had exploded and so did most people at the service station. Only ever had it happen the once.