losing power at speed, wont idle

[seeingred]

My '82 temp gage was up near the red zone for an hour or two in traffic. After I finally got free of traffic, it started to miss and sporadicallly lose power. Then it stalled at a light and refused to idle. I thought I smelled electrical wiring burning. I limped home and left it overnight. Now it runs but still won't idle. I haven't driven it yet. Anybody have a guess as to what's wrong?

[Jimmy C.]

Your spark plugs could be screwy, or your timing could be out. That could be a cause for the overheating, also, your electric fan might not be working.
I don't want to sound like an arsehole, but is there oil in it?
If that's not the case, then it's an electric system easter egg hunt.
Ignition coils...TCI.... you get the picture.
Check those plugs first.

I hope it helps.

[Lucky]

It can't be timming unless something is broken.
check for a clogged fuel filter (you have installed a filter in the petcock line haven't you?) or clogged pilot jets.

[Walt_M.]

Gotta check electrical! Is it charging ok, low volts could be a problem. Check the stator and R/R connections.

[Extent]

Was it just running hot or did it actually overheat and boil over?  I had that happen to me on my way down to LA a couple weeks a go.  Fan fuse blew and I ran for a couple hundred miles with out it, would overheat and boil away all my coolant at every stop and each time it did that my blinkers would stop working.  Only thing I could figure was it was spraying water all over the relays.  Your TCI is back there to, could it perhaps have gotten wet?  Have you been treating it with WD-40?

[seeingred]

Thanks for all the input.  Here's what we know so far.  The bike did not actually overheat it was running just below the red zone. We checked the coolant today and there is still coolant in the overflow.  We also checked the fuel filter and it is clean.   We replaced the stator about 3 months ago.  We pulled the rear sparkplug today and it is clean and new.  We could not get the front plug out but assume it is clean also.   I did not mention that the bike was dropped and laid on its right side for about 10 minutes before we got it stood back up.  It was not running while it was down.  It was dropped from a stop not crashed.  ???

[MotorPlow]

All the above posts are excellent places to look for your idle and power loss problem.  In fact on our Dragon Meet, ps2 had those exact same sympyoms.  The above responses you have gotten so far are almost in the exact same order that we diagnosed ps2's problem.  We found it was a burned igniter box.  We were lucky and had a spare with us.  Ran good after swaping out the boxes.

Good luck,
Chris F.