While riding yesterday the bike started acting like it was low on fuel, I switched it to reserve, gave it a second and seemed to be ok. I headed to the nearest gas station only to find out I was still more than half full. Turned the petcock back and took off. Couple miles down the road it started acting up again, no matter how much gas I gave it, there was no response, all the sudden it was running ok again. I had to nurse it home bucking, sputtering and popping from the carb. At first I figured I had bad gas, but now I'm leaning towards a ignition problem. When I got it home, put it in neutral and revved it up, everything was fine. Any idea's?????

 

Sounds more like something in that fuel line to me

 

Vapor lock?

 

filters at the petcock may be stopping up with some trash, may have to drain tank and take petcock out and clean it.

 

Thanks guys, I'll give that a shot.

 

Well, I drained the tank and cleaned the filter and petcock, they were both pretty clean and had plenty of flow, took it out and still having the issue????? I'm still leaning towards an ignition problem. Idles fine but under a load it's still bucking and stuttering.

 

Check the vacuum line that runs to the petcock, if it looses vacuum it will close for a safety feature. The line can deteriorate.
What year is the bike?

 

It's a '89 FXSTC, no vacuum line on the petcock, now that you mention it, I did have a vacuum line issue when it was serviced at my local HD shop at the carb earlier in the season, they forgot to put it back on and it ran like crap, I'll check that tonight.

 

Sounds a lot like bad spark plugs.

 

+1 Sounds a lot like bad spark plugs.