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Chris wanted another big-bike friendly ride for his GSA.

He had done a ride a week or two back that he wanted to repeat with some changes. Basically it was Duncan area to Sooke through the back-roads, avoiding a chunk that was snow covered the last time.

I’d half promised to show Greg S around the Oliphant area. I think we can put a check mark in that box. From south to NW, to NE and back again.

So I ripped the carb out of the trials bike and had a good look at it yesterday. Put it back together again, and took it out to VMC today. Pretty much the same as the previous trips. It suddenly died on me going up a rough section. That _might_ have been the kill switch suddenly coming back to life… that’s what it felt like, pulling fine then dead.

Later, after a 20 or 30 minute stop in the parking lot, it just did not want to run right. It’s a two stroke, and it’s always missing and popping, but the last few days out have been like this, it runs fine for a bit, and then later it just isn’t right. I was going to go back to practicing on that tire, but it was clear from the get-go that it wasn’t pulling right. So I tried to take it up the hill to give it a chance to run… but it wasn’t into that idea and stalled on the hill, and didn’t want to restart. I glided down the hill, found a rock to stand on and it started with a couple kicks…. I rode it back to the truck and went home.

It’s driving me nuts. I don’t know much about two strokes. But this is wierd. It seems to want a day or two to rest / cool down. When it’s mis-behaving it doesn’t really sound wrong… but it’s a two stroke and it skips and backfires even when it is running “right”. Or maybe it is just that it idles the same when it is misbehaving, but doesn’t really misbehave until you try to open the throttle. It feels like it’s only firing on ever second rev or something.