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starts for about a second then dies

11K views 29 replies 7 participants last post by  romeobravo172 
#1 ·
Hi, new to the forum but have been reading it for about a week or so since i got my Vulcan 750. its a 97 and has about 25000 miles on it. i had made the deal over the internet as a trade and the guy told me that it just needed front brakes and it was having a problem idling. It turns out he had another Vulcan, and was robbing parts off mine before i got there. i got most of the parts, never seeing a Vulcan up close put me at a dis advantage (didn't now what i was looking for to be missing). i did get most of the correct cosmetic parts except for the chrome piece that goes on the right side and appears to screw into the right rear cylinder. i saw the holes but didn't think anything about them, and a friend was out last night helping me diagnose the not starting problem and said that air blew in his face when i was trying to start, so i found two screws that would fit into the holes and plugged em up, but i cant verify it blowing as i never felt it...

I have it all together, did a bunch of preliminary cleaning of the gas tank, and petcock, those are functioning correctly. It seems to be getting gas.

here's what it does, i'll go out there and it's cold, i put it on full choke and it starts for about one or two full rotations, then dies and won't fire back over, but sometimes acts like it wants to. I've tried no choke and 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 and full throttle, and it did one time run a good rev, and then die, but that was last night. i was freaking out because it wouldn't start and stay running then i noticed the oil sight glass had no oil in it :doh: so i stopped everything thinking maybe it was just pulling all the oil into the engine off the oil safety, and killing it. I added 3 quarts of oil today :doh: and tried again this time more confident i wasn't doing permanent damage to the engine. i got it doing the same thing and would run the battery down trying to get it going, i've spayed a bunch of b12 into the carbs hoping to maybe knock out some goo.
waited til the battery charged and tried it again, i managed to get a couple good and loud back fires, and it started for about 3 seconds (woot) but then died again, and repeated all above.

i've tried turning the idle knob at different settings and cant seem to get this bad boy to fire off and stay running. any ideas? i'm really hoping not to have to pull those carbs, they look like more fun than a barrel of rusty monkeys, to remove.
 
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