bad gas burn down

iahacker

Member
Joined
Mar 27, 2005
Messages
178
Age
65
Location
Boone, Iowa
Anyone ever have a burn down due to bad gas? Here's the story:
We rode up the local river 45 miles to a bar everyone goes to. My riding partner's F-7 needed gas. All the local station had was regular 87 octane. After about 20 miles on the way back he burnt both pistons, blew the drive belt and it seems to have something wrong with the bottom end. The Y pipe and main pipe are white inside. He has a Digitron on it and it never gave any warning of over temp at all. We were running WOT at the time. Several years ago I had heard that several sleds burned down after fueling at the same station.

Anybody got any input on this or experience with bad gas?

Just fishing for ideas.

Thanks
 

something fishy about that.Maybe they are watering down the gas or something.Try and get some of that gas and take it to a lab or University for testing and see what is in it.
 
I had a similar situation in 1994 with my zr700 It was water in the fuel maybe from condensation in the tank at the gas station. It ran lean due to a little ice cube that had formed at the bottom of the float bowl. I didn't hurt the crank, but the piston and jug were toast. Be safe check your tank for water.
 
I kinda go with you answered your own question, he put in 87 octane fuel! Using too low of octane fuel will produce detonation and wreck the engine. The thing with EGT's is the placement of the probes and all has to be set with the engine and the engine has to have a baseline temp to set your alarm to. If the sled never had the jetting set up to the proper wash and plug color, the alarm set at a temp higher then what the engine would actually read wouldnt do any good. I get sleds here all the time with egts on them, I place tape over the screens and tune the sled in the old fashoined way first this gives you your baseline jetting, then you might be suprised at the actual temp it runs at, you then reset your alarm for your optimum temp, just a tad above where your tuned in at.
 
Thanks for the input guys. I really appreciate it.
I found out more about what happened today: We were running at 100+ on the spedo's at the time. We went from ice with little snow on it to deep snow with slush under it. This dragged our speed down quickly. Our theory is that when the engine loaded down ad full throttle, the drive belt let go...over reved the engine and burned it down for a couple of reasons. The sled if an F-7 Arctic Cat EFI. The owner put a PAC system on it to lean it down. Mr Viper, you are correct. He didn't check the plugs or anything else when he put on the PAC system which, I thought he had done. He simply set his digitron alarms at 1,100 as D & D told him. He said it would run at 1,080 to 1,090 normally.
So, over rev, lean on fuel and 87 octane equals FUBAR time 2 pistons and cylinders. At least that's what we think.

Thanks again guys.
 
My buddy and both once left a gas station and we both blew are sleds up within 5 miles.And they where stock sleds.
 


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