I suppose it was inevitable. I had my first breakdown today in my brand new Speedster. I was driving along just fine and all of a sudden the car started losing power. Ultimately it stalled. I coasted to a stop and noticed that I heard the fuel pump humming along. I attempted a start and it fired right up. Unfortunately after about 10 seconds at perfect idle, the rpms cratered and it stalled again. I repeated this a number of times, same result.
No backfiring, perfect starts and idle followed by decaying rpm and stall. Sounds like fuel starvation to me.
I ultimately had to get a tow and no time today to work on it. My thoughts are that it definitely is a fuel issue. Consulted with Kevin Hines and he passed along the basic fuel layout. A tank, a fuel filter, then an electric fuel pump, another fuel filter, and then off to the carbs. Definitely have power to the pump, so either the pump has failed (only 5000 miles on the CB Performance 1915), or the fuel filter is clogged.
Anybody had a failure like this? I am flying for the next four days and a local mechanic friend is looking at it. He thinks it should be relatively easy to diagnose considering the symptoms and the simplicity of the system. Anybody know whether one of the carbs (dual webers) could actually be the culprit?
