low RPM bogging/surging - resolved

pretty much all year the bike has been misbehaving once it's warmed up (ran fine when cold) at low RPM. revs would drop below a certain threshold and the power would drop off dramatically as the bike would then 'bog out'... increase the revs, it'd bog down a bit more, then the power would come back all at once.

felt like it was getting too much fuel at low rpm, but before i went chasing a potentially expensive problem in that regard, the fact that i ran fine last year before the winter/spring maintenance was still bugging me.

i'd ran across a good deal on iridium plugs (NGK), so those went in as part of the winter maintenance - can't remember how long the old plugs had been in...5-6 years and 60,000 km or so. never had a problem with plugs before, and never used iridium plugs before, so i wanted to swap them back out before i tried anything else.

picked up some convential NGK plugs, popped them in, and the problem is gone. the bike has that 'electric motor' pull from low RPM all the way up, like it used to.

can't tell you exactly what the problem was, as the iridium plugs i pulled out look pretty good (don't look wet). i'll throw up some photos of them when i get a chance.

i'd be interested to know if anyone has more information as to whys of this situation.

I have a 2001 VFR that kept stalling out at stop signs and during low rpm's. At the time, I was adamant that I would not run ethanol through the bike . . . could only find non-ethanol in the 91 octane fuel. I was stumped as to why my bike was only mis-behaving for me (contacted the ex-owner and no problems). The bike wouldn't give me any codes as to what was wrong. After much turmoil, I decided to go ahead an put 87 octane ethanol-laced fuel into the bike. No joke . . . it cleared up all the problems I was seeing. That was last July. To date I haven't had any issues at all.

Ive had iridiums in my 01 for 15k. No issues whatsoever