On another forum, someone I know rode from Colorado to Illinois (over a 1000 miles in 24 hours) on a Kaw 650 parallel twin..
In his story he told of an issue he ran into:
"Well, 120 miles from Casey humming along on the freeway just west of St. Louis and...."stutter...." "stutter...." Crap, I blip the throttle but she is loosing power fast. I glance down, voltmeter is showing 12.1! That's not good! Thankfully there was an exit 1/2 mile down the road, so I get over quickly to the right lane and the bike shuts off completely half way up the exit ramp. Staying in the right hand lane coasting up the ramp, I flip her into neutral and turn the key off and on a few times. NADA. By the time I get to the top of the exit ramp I already have a list of things to check. Thankfully there's a merge lane to turn right, so I don't even slow down. Downhill I coast with only a smidge of pushing (god bless a 400lb bike) to a gas station about 1/4 of a mile away. Find some shade, cause DAMN it's hot, and get started. Checklist includes main fuse, starter solenoid, main wiring harness, battery.
My seat pad makes an awesome knee pad too when working roadside...
The main fuse housing was a PAIN to get out. No joke took me 15min. Made a mental note to grease that when I got home, as I don't carry any grease with me.
Main fuse was good.
Obviously couldn't jump the bike crossing the solenoid as I had zero power.
Solenoid looked good.
Main wiring harness looked fine.
Battery was showing 12.3 volts.
Next I unscrew the terminal bolt from the hot side with the intention of removing the o ring for power to the fuse block. Screwed it back in with just the main wiring harness attached. Still nothing. Ok... Unscrew again, and happen to glance at the underside of the terminal... Oh dear. There's the problem. I walk inside the gas station to the counter where a nice young lady who's husband rides a road king had been checking on me this entire time, "excuse me ma'am, could I borrow a little bit of coke?" "What are you mcgyver'ing now?" "It seems my battery terminal is corroded, coke will clean it up toot sweet." "Absolutely! Get yourself a glass of ice water too, you look toasted. You know, I wish I could just come out and watch, I've learned more from you in the last hour than I have from my husband in the last year!" Not quite sure how to respond to that, I just smiled graciously and thanked her.
Some coke, a bit of scraping with my knife, everything re-attached and vroom vroom, purring like a kitten will 13.4 volts at idle (ramps to 14.2 above 6k rpm). Well at this point I'm punching myself wishing I'd checked that first! Hadn't thought of checking for a corroded battery terminal on a bike that's 5 years old!
In a post, I thanked my friend Ash for his story.. I know it was meant for all of our amusement, but I got more than that out of it.. Read below..
I recently got a different seat for my Magna.. A group of us went out last week-end and I led..
Nobody mentioned to me that my left rear blinker was not working.. (Grrrr), but I noticed it a day or two after..
So, Today I went out to the garage to figure out what I disconnected while installing the new seat..
I found the wire that was disconnected, so I got out some Dielectric grease and slobbered some on and reconnected the connector...
Then I thought of the story above and said to myself... "Self, Don't wind up like Ash, spend an extra couple of minutes checking things over"..
Well I have two inline fuses (One for my Air Horns and one for 3 accessory switches on my brake reservoir)...
What did I find??
One of the fuse holders had a big hole in the side of it exposing the electrified spring :shock:.. So I got some heat shrink out and got a couple of pieces over the fuse case - Dielectric grease for the connections and fuse - much better now.. 8)
I then went to my other fuse holder which looked fine, but when I turned on my Aux Light, the holder got really hot at one end (Not a good connection)(http://i44.tinypic.com/ilm0e9.jpg).. So a little sand papering to the ends, a little stretching of the spring, a little more Dielectric grease.. It runs much cooler now.. :-D
So, because of someone taking the time to tell a story and about the issue they had.. He may have saved ME, and whoever I'm with, from sitting on the side of the road with the seat off scratching something
(like my head... What were you thinking???)
Thanx to the above story I had a good reminder that maintaining the electrical system is a good way to happy motoring!! (http://i40.tinypic.com/dwx99e.jpg)
Did I mention I LOVE DiElectric grease??? :-D
But you never mentioned SeaFoam
:(
Quote from: Indonlire on April 17, 2011, 06:37:03 PM
But you never mentioned SeaFoam
:(
Nope.. I did not include any pictures either.. However, If it helps, I did put some SeaFoam in the lawn mower today just before mowing the lawn..
Funny story you reminded me of, my friends bike a Harley (cough) was sparking when started and while running, and frequently dieing (electrically).... Turns out the first thing I checked battery connections screws one was loose as the lock nut on the positive terminal was no where in sight...I put new copper lock nuts on his battery and lubed it with some dielectric and all was good again. Good advice though...
That reminds me of my first experience riding in bad weather; it was spring of 1982, I was 17 and burning my last few months as a free man before I went off to boot camp. I was working with a company installing telephone cables through the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas for South Western Bell and having to commute to Ozark from Waldron to get to the job site every day.
I was commuting on my beloved 1973 CB500 Honda Motorcycle to save some gas money, but that was ok by me because I loved riding in the mountains anyway. Well, in that part of the country, the weather can get bad in a hurry in the spring and it was doing so as I was getting off of work around 6 Pm that day. I hopped on my bike and headed into Ozark from the job site to gas up.
As I was filling up, the attendant asked where I was headed and asked if I knew there was a tornado coming our way. The sky was starting to look bad, but being the storm was coming out of the North West and I was going South I figured I'd be ok. Well I got about 15 miles out of Ozark when I realized the storm was a lot bigger than I'd figured and moving fast. I was caught in a torrential down pour with lightning popping all around me and I was getting really nervous about the situation, but there was no cover anywhere to be found, so I rode a little faster to try and out run it.
I finally got ahead of the storm about the time I reached Booneville, but had to pull into a service station. Due to the points cover on my poor soaked bike, it had a bad gasket and would barely stay running. I asked the attendant if he had any WD-40 to spray on the points to disperse the water; he did. He also gave me some sealant to put on the cover gasket to help keep the water out. The guy tried to talk me into sticking out the storm there because he said a tornado was headed in. All I wanted was to get home, so I was on my way again.
The storm caught me again as I had to turn west to get to Waldron and so lost my head start advantage on the storm. It was the worst lightning I can ever remember being stuck out in with out cover. I actually saw a large oak tree, just off the road get hit and every leaf on the tree glowed red then disappeared in a poof of smoke. Since the bike was not running right as it was and I could hardly see it was raining so hard, I was running way late when I finally got home.
Man, was I ever glad to be home in one piece. That was my first time for bad weather riding; I had no rain gear and the bike was not in good shape for riding in the wet stuff. I feel lucky to have learned that lesson and not died in the process.
Sounds like a real 1st class adventure to me!