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Loss of power in LC4 Loss of power in LC4
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Old 26 Feb 2009
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Cork, Ireland
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Loss of power in LC4
Hi all,

I’m in Peru at the moment close to the city of Cusco, touring south America, on my KTM LC4 400, the military version described in anther thread here.

I have a problem at the moment where I appear to be losing compression. I can only drive at 10 or 15 km/p/h and I cant get the engine to rev high.

Now this problem first appeared yesterday when soon after filling up with petrol the bike started lurch and hesitate on acceleration. There was a village 20 km up the road and I thought i´d change petrol there. There was no petrol there so I decided to return to the previous village. Halfway on the way back my bike lost power and would only drive at 10 km/p/h and wouldn’t rev high. Thinking my carb was dirty or fouled I stopped at a mechanic and we totally cleaned the carb and the jets etc (which were a little dirty). It made no difference whatsoever. Using a finger down the spark plug hole we found out that the compression was bad. Looking at the valve clearances, the injection ones were very very loose. The exhaust clearances were ok. Tightening the admission tappets up made a huge difference and it was almost back to normal. I didnt drive any more that day.
So today I got new petrol in a different station and filtered it this time. I drove off and 1 or 2 km up the road the same problem happened, where my power totally went and I could only crawl along.

Now whats weird is I had only tightened the valve clearances the day before. I had last adjusted them in Chile around 2,000km previously where both admission and exhaust were pretty good (only a little bit too tight). Whilst driving to Cusco I heard that they sounded loose again but put the noise down to the altitude – for the last 1,000 odd km i´ve been at approx 2,500 to 5,000 meters. I checked them in Cusco and found that the admission valve clearances were really very very loose so tightened them up there (exhaust were fine).

I also noticed that there appeared to be a slight hole/tear in the oil pipe going from the frame to the exhaust valve hatch. There wasn’t any oil around the area and so I just patched it up with insulation tape.

My oil looks fine through the view window and dipping a magnetic screwdriver in shows no metal flakes. My coolant level is fine and looks fine.
Because of the altitude I took off the lid off the airbox to get power (don’t have smaller jet), the air filter is clean and oiled.
I´ve been running on 90 octane petrol (cant get 95 here) for the last 1000 odd km and changed the switch on the CDI to 80 octane.
The manual says to use 10W50 oil but there is none in this part of the world so i´ve been using 20W50, either motul or bel-ray

So i´ve organized a pick up truck to take the bike and me back to Cusco (nearest city) later today. I´ll probably try and take the bike to a mechanic there.

Any thoughts on what might be the problem would be gratefully appreciated.

- Eamon

PS going to post this over on adv rider as well.
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