yesterday's issue. Bounce ideas off me.

[Toecutter]

V7 Special. 2014.

I've had a few issues since buying it.

1) Gear shift lever nearly fell off first week after buying it, while riding down the highway.

2) Stripped bolts in final drive resulted in leaking oil all over my rear rim and tire, result was a complete rebuild of final drive at 6000 km on the clock.

3) The tech that put it back together left out a spacer, resulting in a cocked rear wheel and hub, fixed quickly.

4) Here's the one I want to bounce off you guys... yesterday's issue, at 9,960 km on the clock:

Yesterday, my commute to work  (30 km) in the early morning was fine, though something felt "off", I couldn't put my finger on it. When I started the bike to ride home at 3:00 PM, it started fine, chugged down very low, but did not stall. My ride back into the city on was fine, again... just felt "off". As I rode down 107 avenue heading east, when I opened the throttle, the bike bogged on hard acceleration, and felt as though it was "falling on it's face". It picked up, though, and seemed to accelerate well, if I took a slow and steady approach to twisting the throttle. I rode through university and down (Local Strip), when I stopped at an intersection, the bike began to surge, between 1000  RPM and 1700 RPM while stopped. As I left the intersection, the bike felt as though it was running on one cylinder. I pulled over immediately, and let it idle. I had some intermittent popping through the right pipe. When I slowly twisted the throttle, the popping became steady and consistent.. I shut the bike off, took a breather and waited for about 10 minutes. I started it again, chugged low, but kept running. Tried riding it again... very low power, popping.  When I pulled over this time, the right muffler had blued deeply from joint to about 8" down the canister. At this point, I called (my dealer) and waited for a tow.



So... thoughts? It's fuel, air or spark. Plugs are a week old, gapped between .8 and .9. New air filter. Gas has only been pure gas, high octane. It's never seen anything but. All maintenance has been performed as per schedule. Anyone have ideas?

it's at the shop right now (still under warranty)... and I'm pissed, quite honestly... but I thought I'd make it a discussion.

BTW: forgive the slightly awkward formatting of the "issue details" I modified it slightly from the email I sent to my dealer.

[SmithSwede]

Based on my history with a 2013 Stone, I'd pull the spark plugs and carefully inspect them, along with the spark plug caps.

If your bike uses the OEM all rubber boot, they are trouble.   They burn and coat the outside of the spark plug with carbon, causing the plugs to mis-fire.  Replace with NGK bakelite caps (or wait until the warranty is over before making the switch).

I'm also convinced that these small blocks are very sensitive to the oil level, and will blow oil into the airbox if you add "too much" oil.  But you can't go by what the dipstick shows--the engine will tell you how much oil it likes.

By itself, blowing oil into the airbox isn't a big deal, just a mess.  But I think the engine then sucks that oil in, tending to foul the throttle body, the spark plugs, and maybe also the O2 sensors. 

Did you get any "check engine" lights?

[Toecutter]

No. No "check engine" warnings.

I have found oil in the airbox, nothing alarming... though maybe it should have been.

[old as dirt 2]

I just had those same symptoms  found one of the spark plug HT cables arcing to the head right by the plug cap. threw some black tape on it and all is good again.