Backfiring or what the heck? Help

[tg2398]

Hey...I took my 2001 400ex over to my friends today and about 5 min into riding my quad started to backfire and not start up and when it did the engine died and it made an intense nasty sounding noise and shut off. Figuring it was the spark plug we went and got a new plug. The problem kept happening. It was backfiring and shutting off with a horrible sound. I started to get worried and we towed it back. Once back i decided to try to start it one more time. I started it and it started right up and i rode for about an hour with no problems after that. Any Ideas??? Please

[GPracer2500]

Bad gas?
Dirty carb?
Loose choke?

[tg2398]

yeah...I changed the gas and it seems to be working fine once i get it warmed up...I still wanna clean the carb I just have never done it before so I need a little help

[1ride2for-god]

Unless you want to take the whole carb apart and clean every part of it, then it wount be that hard. Just take the fender pices that are over the engine off. Try to get some kind of wrench onto the choke cable and tighten that. If that doesn't help then you will have to take the carb out. These instrucktions will probably help. First you need to get the airbaox out, there's probly a screw at the bottum or on one of the sides(take those out first. Then loosen the screw that clamps on the intake to the air box, pull it out of the hole (you probly wont have to take that out). Then do the same with the screw clamping the airbax to the carb, take the airbox out. Take the throtle housing off of the carb and pull the trottle wire out. It can be somewhat tricky to do this sometimes, there's not realy any real techniqe for it, just do it any way you can without breaking it. Then don't just start pulling lines off, you'll never get them back on right:rolleyes: Pull one tube off at a time and mark it somehow. Paint will wor, or collord tape. make sure you mark the hole it came off of with the same collor. Do this with all of the lines. Then you sould just be able to loosen the screw that clamps the carb to the engine and take the carb out. I'm not going to tell you to pull the carb apart because a 400EX carb is totaly foregn to me. I'm just going to tell you to get some carb cleaner and spray it into the intake air intake, gas intake, all of your breather holes, and the one that go to the engine. Open the throttle up and spray it in there too. You might need to get a couple of cans just to make sure you wont run out. Hope you get your quad fixed, and I hope this helps. Make sure you keep us up to date on how your doing, I'm watching. Hope you have a good day, God bless.:)