C
I recently bought a late 2016 Honda Pioneer 1000-5 deluxe from a family of MX / enduro racers who didn't have room to bring it along in their toy hauler along with all of their bikes to events. It had about 100 miles and 30 hours on it when I bought it from them in what appeared to be good shape. They seem to be good honest people that also have several mechanics in the family. I didn't get much chance to drive it initially other than to pop it up on a trailer, but everything seemed fine.
A few days later I took the Honda SxS on a trailer from San Francisco up to our property near Donner Pass at an elevation of about 6800'. The air temp was about 60F out and most of the snow has melted. My plan was to drive the vehicle in on a 2.5mi road to a shipping container on our property where we will use it in the snow-free months. It was still too early to drive my truck on this road.
Unfortunately, I had some serious engine problems when driving it the level 2.5 miles in to our property. It cold started up fine in the parking lot and I drove it about 1/4 mile in though a mix of dirt patches and snow up to a foot deep at a very conservative pace (walking speed or slower) when the engine lost power and stalled out on me. It had a hard time restarting and it would not idle - I had to keep the RPMs at 2k or above to keep it running, but it would stall again if I tried to put it in gear - basically no power.
I decided to give the machine a rest while I looked it over to see if there was any obvious issues:
* Air pre-filter looked fine (did not open the main air filter compartment)
* Coolant temperature shown on the dash was "2/4" bars, which I think is normal
* Coolant level was OK (I checked this a bit later)
* Fuel cap breather was OK (no vacuum in fuel tank)
Foolishly, I didn't have much in the way of tools with me, so I couldn't get too adventurous with taking apart more.
After waiting 30-45min, it started right up again and was behaving normally. However, I didn't get very far before the same issue happened again. It really seemed to be behaving as if the engine was overheating, even though the coolant temperature on the dash seemed normal. I also found it strange that I almost never heard the electric radiator fan cycling during all this time. I have heard it come on in the past, but not during this issue. The coolant itself did not seem extraordinarily hot and there was no boiling over to the overflow tank happening. There was a fading hissing sound at the motor after it would stall, but I was guessing that was some sort of vacuum system or compression leak-down.
This happened several more times to get the full 2.5mi in and took a couple of hours total. Basically the machine has little power and the motor quickly reaches a point where it stalls out once it warms up. The issue seems thermally related, but the normal coolant temps are baffling to me. For a moment I thought that the coolant temp sensor may be bad, but it does in fact drop to one bar if you let the vehicle cool down enough. I am using this at 6800' of altitude, but this is a fuel injected motor with I assume either a mass airflow sensor and / or manifold and ambient air pressure sensors, so it should be getting the AFRs right at any altitude. Air temps were around 60F, so other than the altitude there were no real extreme demands on the motor.
Obviously, I also sent an email to the previous owners to see if they might know what is going on, but I figured you folks might have seen an issue like this before.
A few days later I took the Honda SxS on a trailer from San Francisco up to our property near Donner Pass at an elevation of about 6800'. The air temp was about 60F out and most of the snow has melted. My plan was to drive the vehicle in on a 2.5mi road to a shipping container on our property where we will use it in the snow-free months. It was still too early to drive my truck on this road.
Unfortunately, I had some serious engine problems when driving it the level 2.5 miles in to our property. It cold started up fine in the parking lot and I drove it about 1/4 mile in though a mix of dirt patches and snow up to a foot deep at a very conservative pace (walking speed or slower) when the engine lost power and stalled out on me. It had a hard time restarting and it would not idle - I had to keep the RPMs at 2k or above to keep it running, but it would stall again if I tried to put it in gear - basically no power.
I decided to give the machine a rest while I looked it over to see if there was any obvious issues:
* Air pre-filter looked fine (did not open the main air filter compartment)
* Coolant temperature shown on the dash was "2/4" bars, which I think is normal
* Coolant level was OK (I checked this a bit later)
* Fuel cap breather was OK (no vacuum in fuel tank)
Foolishly, I didn't have much in the way of tools with me, so I couldn't get too adventurous with taking apart more.
After waiting 30-45min, it started right up again and was behaving normally. However, I didn't get very far before the same issue happened again. It really seemed to be behaving as if the engine was overheating, even though the coolant temperature on the dash seemed normal. I also found it strange that I almost never heard the electric radiator fan cycling during all this time. I have heard it come on in the past, but not during this issue. The coolant itself did not seem extraordinarily hot and there was no boiling over to the overflow tank happening. There was a fading hissing sound at the motor after it would stall, but I was guessing that was some sort of vacuum system or compression leak-down.
This happened several more times to get the full 2.5mi in and took a couple of hours total. Basically the machine has little power and the motor quickly reaches a point where it stalls out once it warms up. The issue seems thermally related, but the normal coolant temps are baffling to me. For a moment I thought that the coolant temp sensor may be bad, but it does in fact drop to one bar if you let the vehicle cool down enough. I am using this at 6800' of altitude, but this is a fuel injected motor with I assume either a mass airflow sensor and / or manifold and ambient air pressure sensors, so it should be getting the AFRs right at any altitude. Air temps were around 60F, so other than the altitude there were no real extreme demands on the motor.
Obviously, I also sent an email to the previous owners to see if they might know what is going on, but I figured you folks might have seen an issue like this before.
