Looks like an early end to my season...

[RedRider2k2]

My bike was running decent all summer and that was fine with me. I had planned to maybe track down the cause of it burning a little oil and overfueling over the winter. Yesterday that changed pretty quick. I went for a little ride and then hit the highway to make it home in time. While I was droning along a Mustang passed me at about 2x the speed limit. It was on a perfectly straight, flat stretch of divided 4 lane highway that goes on for about 5 miles so I decided to catch up to him. I simply rolled on to it in 6th and quickly hit about 220KM/H which reeled him in pretty good. But then I realized it just wouldnt pull anymore. I found myself giving more throttle just to hold that speed. In the couple of seconds it took to realize this I started losing speed and I was at WOT. I quickly let off and dropped down to the speed limit. I knew something was wrong and I had a pretty good idea what. Since the bike has been running so rich, I figured it probably fouled another plug. I limped it home and put it away for the night. (Now some guy in a Mustang thinks he totally smoked me) But I noticed something when I slowed down enough to really hear the engine...It almost sounded like a hissing in the exhaust...Uh oh.

Today I pulled the fairings off, moved the rad and pulled the plug on #3. I found what a expected, and what I feared. The plug was incredibly fouled and missing most of the electrode. Something tells me it bounced off the crown of the piston and exited right through an Exhaust valve. I've seen this happen to a small car engine before so I'm sure it's more than possible with something like this. Hopefully I'm wrong. This week I plan to replace the plug and try it again to see how it works. If it still runs like shit and hisses at me then the engine will have to come out. (Really, it should anyway to track down the oil consumption problem. Which is obviously related to, if not causing, this problem.)

This bike has been a whole lot of problems this summer and it looks like they're going to extend into the winter. I managed to get about 5000KMs on it and it didnt leave me stranded when I took it about 1000Kms from home so at least that much went well.