'05 strom bogging and surging

ok. so i searched for about an hour and a half ....... nothing seems related ... so dont give me any sh** about searches.



So - my buddy and I rode to Neah Bay two weekends ago, about four/five hundred miles total. everything clockwork - except the collapsed roads and all and a misbehaving DR400. ( ill post a RR on that later .. ) I rode around town two days ago for some errands and it SEEMED like she was running a bit funny - sorta like working too hard? didnt think too much of it and got home and parked her till today. TODAY i took off to run around town again and got about 4 miles and all the sudden bogging. run the RPMs a bit and she SURGES - surprising fun! :eek1 :eek1



Boooooooggggg.... surge. boooooogg. SURGE.



So the only thing i can relate the bogging to is if your driving a car and the cat converter is plugged. no power. keep giving it throttle and it just bogs. blehhh blehhh...... it SEEMS like a fuel issue but i dont know so im wondering if anyone else has had this problem. I pulled the tank off - checked the fuel, seems clean. pulled the pump out - but i havent taken the filter or screen off/out.



Anyone have any ideas or similar experiences?



Ill be out in the 'rents garage poking and tinkering and keep checking back in.


ANY and all help will be much appreciated guys. this hasnt been a good week to have this come into play.

I saw a post similar to this once. Turned out the Throttle body boots were off, or loose. Can't remember exactly. But it was an issue with them not being on correctly. As I recall, it was on the intake.

Had a similar issue with my 03. Turned out to be bad plug wire boots.

checked the intake boots. tight as a drum.




checked the plug boots. nice and limber. they click in nice and tight on the plugs and are tight on the plug wires. cant see how they would be a problem...


i also pulled the pump and filter out of the tank and the filter looks great. couple little specs but ive seen WAY worse. carb cleaned the filter and screen so we'll see.




thanks for the responses ............

ill be getting back on it when I get home tonight. I figure ill backflush the filter housing and do a seafoam treatment. that alsways seems to work wonders.


having the plug boots mentioned earlier - what would be the best way to test those? aside from holding on to them and waiting for the shock....... they LOOK ok but with 30k on em - maybe? dunno.

Your laughing I know but if you have ever over filled the oil or tipped the ride over sometimes a small amount of oil can get into the intake track through the filter case, and while your there toss the filter and put in a new OEM not a aftermarket filter.

nope - not laughing. sometimes the smallest stupid things are the culprit. I did notice a bit of oil in the airbox. oil level looks a bit high. dunno. the air filter was fine - knocked some bugs out and she's clean.

Does it sound/feel like it's running on one cylinder below 3000 or above 6000?

that's about half right...... its more of a 'no power' feeling than a missing cylinder. you know - you give it more and more throttle and it just gets louder, doesn't produce any more power. I've ran vtwins and parallel twins on single or weak cylinders and that feels more like its just weaker.


but its RPM related for sure. at about 4-5k is when it'll surge and feel normal. under and over that just bogs.


another thing - I've never looked in the exhaust can after I cut the peashooter out. when you look inside you can see the inner honeycomb in the middle chamber. when I was smelling the exhaust yesterday - which smells funny too ..... burnt ...... the honeycomb is REDhot. dunno if this is normal simply from the exhaust heat, or a symptom of my problem.


what do you think?

ok folks - here's the latest.


got home early and tore into it. seafoam treatment didn't free anything up - which was more of a hope and prayer anyway cause its worked so well in the past. it'll idle fine when started and then idle down and sound throatier - when ridden, same as yesterday.... bogs and surges. from a stop it almost wants to die even.


the only thng I REALLY noticed was tedder's question of the RPM range. it IS more around 6k as he stated - where it'll surge. too much throttle - back to bogging but a roll on will allow a tad power.


guys - I'm stumped. suggestions and experience is much appreciated.



someone's got to have dealt with this.

Well, I never did find the problem on my '04, but I'm 99% certain what it was. Supposedly there's a bit of trouble that causes ONE injector wire to corrode.

That makes sense, considering I swapped the ECU, fuel pump, and pretty much everything else on the damn beast.

Mine got better after it ran for a while. So if I let the bike sit for a couple weeks, it would run poorly for the first hour or two, and then would USUALLY improve. Which explains why I put 20-30k miles on the bike after that without finding it.

People who haven't encountered this think it is something relatively minor. No, the bucking and surging we are talking about is MAJOR. It won't idle, yet it runs fine in the 3000-6000rpm range, then it starts acting up. You can go down the freeway at 60mph, but if you try to twist the throttle AT ALL it'll start bucking and shaking like a KLR.

So it's a bitch to get to the injector wires, but don't be surprised if that's the problem. If it is one of the wires, you should be able to pull the related spark plug wire while the bike is running and the it'll will run exactly the same, which proves it is definitely only running on one cylinder.

Obviously, follow Occam and check all the easy stuff first. Maybe I'm leading you down a false path. But I wouldn't start swapping ECUs like I did until you check the injector wiring.

Have you done a fuel flow test to see the condition of your fuel filter?
It's easy to do and it sounds like when you give it a little gas you have a problem.
Should be over 600ml in 30 seconds. This is where mine is right now (42k) BUT it was at 1000ml at one time... I'm at it's service limit and have a new one bit at $170 I'm waiting as long as I can. But people that have clogged fuel filters sound like they have your problem. But not my first hand experience.

thanks guys.


as far as the injector wire - sounds similar. but this thing idles fine with some slag. but when you get on it to go - NO power. barely moves sometimes. so dunno.



as far as fuel filter. went through the damn thing. didnt do a flow chart - so I need to do that but I don't have any equipment to read the flow.

Okay you say it idles fine. But runs oddly in the mid range. I saw this guy do a trick years ago to find a intake leak. He used a propane torch UNLIT and allowed the gas vapour to flow around the intake area while some held the throttle in the rev zone of question, when the gas was drawn in to the leaking seam the motor ran smooth because it was getting fuel.

If not that you should check for a crimped vacuum line under the tank or seat.

Best of luck.

Yep, it's a great way to find intake leaks. Just be careful how long you run the propane canister, and do it with an open door (or outside).

If it's a vac leak, it should run fine (or at least better) at WFO, and worst at idle.

Hi, all you need is a measuring cup and a wire to jump from the power side of the battery to one of the prongs on the fuel relay after you unplug the ecu. I'm at work but can get you the procedure if nobody jumps in later today. Hope this helps.

so. anyone have a fuel pump i can buy off ya?



today is the first time i had time to get back into this thing and the first thing i noticed was that i couldnt even get it to idle. any fuel would kill it if it WOULD idle. all the sudden, i didnt hear the fuel pump wurrrrring and she wouldnt even start. i pulled the pump plug apart and put power directly to it and nothing.


i think the fuel pumps shot.



did i hear somewhere that a new unit is like $400???

anyone know if an '04 pump will work in an '05?


seems like it should - but i dont know. theres one on ebay right now ill buy if it works.

Yeah, they are the same from '04-06. And yes, $400 is about right, I had to wait about a month for one

thanks tedder.


i sent you a PM on the same question.


buy-it-now here i come!!