I recently purchased a 2002 ST1100 as a result of many of the fine comments on this board. I bought it with 36,000 miles on it and have put 3,000 of my own miles on it. I LOVE IT. I bought it for $2,500. The fun for value component is off the charts. HOWEVER, recently it starting developing a problem where the the bike surges forward without me turning the throttle and then sometimes it seems to have a drop of power like I'm riding a 350 cc bike. The hard part is I love to ride but have absolutely no experience with troubleshooting and even some of the most basics of maintenance discussed on this forum......so off I go to a Honda dealership hoping they can get to the bottom of it at a reasonable cost. As a start they check the plugs and coil and recommend replacement of the spark plugs and ensure that spark plug caps are rethreaded strongly to the coil wiring? They take for a test ride and feel everything is okay. When I pick up the bike and go for a ride the problem is still there. I call them and they say they will have to step by step go through the bike until the problem is solved. Makes complete sense....but given their labor rates, etc. , I could easily paying way more for trying to get this bike to work than what I originally paid for it. So I try to be smart and find one of the best independent shops around with more reasonable labor rates to give me a second opinion. He is Honda certified and seemed very, very, knowledgeable. He goes for a test ride and says he feels that the bike is dropping and running on 2 cylinder's and is very sure it is something in the electrical system. However he checks the coil resistance, spark plugs, and wiring harness, etc.......everything seems okay. After more head scratching, etc. he decides to look into the fuel system. Ultimately, he puts in Seafoam wondering if the gas in that tank is bad, etc. Take's it for a test ride and feel's it much improved. I pick up the bike, run another tank of gas through it and problem is way worse than before. Feeling brave after spending hours on this forum. I take off the plastic and look to do the fuel value vacuum by pass only to find out the that has already been done. It continues to run but it is super rough. If feels to me that it is a fuel delivery problem to the carburetors, but I'm TOO much of a rookie to attempt anything with them myself. In fact I'm amazed when some of say just pull off this and inspect and check this....I have no idea.
I interested in your comments and thoughts so I could a least talk the lingo with a mechanic to get to the bottom of this. Or did I make a rookie mistake in buying a 20 year bike when I don't have repair skills and perhaps I should trade in on something newer. I don't want to give up since so many times I have read on this forum of people who say they ridden 30,000 miles and all I have done is change fluids, tires, etc.
What to do?
Scott
