Yamaha FZS600 Fazer Part 4 Feeling Flushed!

The mighty Fazer 600 is up and running – though not quite as smoothly as we’d hoped.

- Alan Dowds

One of the tips I picked up early doors when working on bikes is that 95 per cent of the time running problems are down to electrics, and the ignition system in particular. That was certainly true back in the early 1990s, before properly sealed connectors and super-reliable components became par for the course. Back then, water, corrosion and old tech like frame-mounted coils with their sprawling HT leads and plug caps caused no end of problems, with dodgy sparks the cause of much starting and idling troubles.

Fast-forward to 2019, and it’s fair to say that much of this has been sorted on modern bikes: multi-connector blocks have rubber gasket seals all round, plug-top coils have banished HT leads, and ECU boxes are totally sealed, packed with solid-state components which have massive MTBF (mean time between failure) statistics. Nothing’s perfect of course, but it’s fair to say that electrical and ignition problems have become far less common.

Working on the mighty Fazer 600 though, I reckon that my old-school tactics are sound. Regular readers will recall that last month I stripped and cleaned the mucky old carbs, and was feeling pretty sure of myself as I refitted them, bolted in a brand new Motobatt AGM battery from Wemoto, and filled the renovated fuel tank with fresh unleaded. A thumb of the starter, and we burst into life – albeit a rather lumpy, uneven life. The little Thundercat-derived engine is hunting about, clearly running on one, then two, and maybe three or four cylinders as I twist the throttle and the revs rise. Gah!