Hi all, I'm new here and hope some one could give me some tips.
I have a 1997 Vmax with 17,000 miles and I'm the original owner. I always store my bike in my heated basement during the winter and use fuel stabilizer. During storage I'll start the engine once or twice to keep the fuel from gumming up. This spring I'm having a hard time starting the bike without the use of starting fluid, once it starts it runs fine. After turning off the engine, it will start right up if its warm. If I let it sit for a day or two same thing happens and will not start. Any suggestion is appreciated.

You've got to get those carbs clean. Idle circuits are clogged or partially gummed up..

Put a heavy Dose of Sea Foam or an other Carb Cleaner into the Fuel and ride it for some Miles. Let the Bike sit for a Day or or two, to let the Chemicals work it's magic. Then get out and ride like you stole it, empty the Tank and run another one through the System.


If Things don't clear up, it's time to clean up the Carbs, preferable in an Ultrasonic Cleaner.

If it finally starts, and "runs fine", and also idles fine, without undo backfiring and/or coughing, I'm betting your ECU (black box) is beginning to give you grief. aka weak spark. You might do well to double check your battery voltages, both with the key off (min 12.6V), and while actually cranking the engine (can't remember the min here, but around 10.8V I think). Again after you have the bike idling (should come up to 13.25 min.).

Low voltage problems are common on the Gen 1. When mine began doing this, it would crank so strongly, there's no way I would ever imagine I had a voltage problem. But by and by, I'd notice the only time it wanted to even try firing was at the exact moment I let up on the start button, and while the engine was still turning over. The bike would also fire right up IF I had jumper cables connected to another vehicle while turning over. Yet when I let the bike battery alone spin it.....weak spark.....no fire.

I ended up upgrading the voltage reg/recifier for better charging, and at the same time, did the battery box mod and fitted the bigger battery. I've never had the trouble again - and I'm still running the original ECU.

Having well maintained and thoroughly cleaned and adjusted carbs never hurts either.

After dropping off the bike at my local dealer for 1 week, they could not tell me exactly what the problem was but told me that everything points to the pickup coil but hey were not 100% sure. They wanted $398 for a new coil plus 1.5 hour labor but couldn't guarantee it would be fixed.So I decided to go and get the bike and see if I could tinker and get it going. The first thing I did was to remove the left engine side cover where the magneto and pickup coil are located. In doing so I noticed that the harness that has the 2 wires going to the pickup coil had a broken wire. Inside the black tubing where the 2 wires are at the bottom there was some kind of dried up solution that had harden and crystallized and was green, I have no idea what it was but the 2 wires in that are were dried up and brittle! I spliced in new wires, soldered and applying shrink tubing and now it runs like new again! Hope this could help someone with similar problem. I'm still a bit confused how good it ran once the engine was warm before I fixed it, but all that matters is how good it runs now.