Mother truckin' electrics!

[Ragingrob]

OK, what fits these symptoms?! :

Bike runs mint as.
No loss of power at all when accelerating.
Handled a few hundred k ride last weekend amazingly.
Cuts out once every few weeks whilst riding...

Today heading home motorway from town to Karaka, indicated to head off at offramp and I noticed the dash lights were quite dim, got halfway up offramp and indicated to turn right whilst slowing down and bike cuts out completely. Turn key off and on, dash lights on but dim, no starter at all. If I turned lights on, dash dims out completely.

So... Push fucking bike up offramp hill, turn right out of offramp and push bike up fucking bridge where there is no room but the lane. Jump on bike, run down hill, bump starts fine and runs fine. Lights full beam, dash lights bright, starter works easy, all good!

Get home and battery measures fully charged, regulator fault finding says charging system is all sweet...

Hmmm... Well I've put the battery on charge anyway... Is it possible that the battery is just getting old and gives up for a few mins at a time?

P.S. This whole cutting out thing has happened for the past say 4 months, but has only happened like 6 times or so... And whenever we check the electrics it says it's all good and not to worry lol and then throws a hissy fit when finally I think everything is perfect!

Sooo... Battery? Help me out!

[Spuds1234]

Loose battery terminal connection?

A loose connection somewhere.

Find it. Fix it. Ride the bike.

[Bloody Mad Woman (BMW)]

Can relate to your frustration with fn electrics. Had some problems once with my bike - I sprayed CRC around things. Had changed the battery but it wasn't that. Checked starter etc - you name it. Don't know what was wrong really but after the CRC I've never had a problem.

[Ragingrob]

The past few times I have checked and cleaned contacts and made sure terminals are on nice and tight!

It's just so damn hard because whatever happens, it seems to run fine again 'till next time! Difficult to single any problems out!

[Ragingrob]

Can relate to your frustration with fn electrics. Had some problems once with my bike - I sprayed CRC around things. Had changed the battery but it wasn't that. Checked starter etc - you name it. Don't know what was wrong really but after the CRC I've never had a problem.

Is it safe and am I able to spray CRC or WD40 onto battery terminals? In case they just have some kinda grease/dirt that I can't see straight off?

[idb]

I'd first check all your battery connections.

Look at the connections onto your battery terminals, are they all furry?
Take them off, file or sand the terminals and the lugs down to shiny metal, connect back up nice and tight. Vaseline around the connection to keep air out would be better than WD40.

Then check the connection of the negative lead to the bike frame.
Take it off and clean it up to make sure you have a good clean connection.

Try all that first before getting deeper into it.

[Squiggles]

Take your multimeter and ride with it, when she does it again, measure up the batt etc. You might end up the multimeter hardwired to it for a wee while till you notice what is happening

[klyong82]

Sounds like a battery issue. Might pay to check the terminals and connectors clean clean.

http://community.cbrworld.net/forums.../ShowPost.aspx
The above site is good to check if the reg/rec is toasted. But if the bike is working properly now then it might be a connection issue...

[Ragingrob]

Hmm yeah have followed a fault finding chart for reg/rec like the last 3 times it has cut out and it always goes nowhere, just saying that it's all working properly, even after me and Steve heated it up heaps with a hairdryer to see if it was stuffing once it got hot, but it was still all good!

I'm gonna file the terminals and connectors tomo and check the earth.

[roadracingoldfart]

Sounds more like an earth issue to me. Check for a crook earth near the dash etc.
Have you done anything to the bike recently like painting or such ??? It takes stuff all to cause a bad earth.

Just a wee thought.
Cheers Paul.

[Taz]

I had a 91 VFR750 that shat a reg/rec. Bike would start fine in the morning from cold but when I got to work the dash lights would be dim, battery hot and would hardly crank over. Let it sit for a few hours and it'd fire up no probs. Checked the charge rate and at 4000-5000 RPM it was pumping 18-19 volts in to the battery. Replaced the reg/rec with an aftermarket one and all was good again.
Andy.

[Mike748]

Sounds like my friends 916, will start won't start, batt fine etc etc.
His solution to date was to check and spray all connections with CRC.

CRC is fine on electrical connections, I used to use the marine type on my outboard and it did a great job stopping corrosion.

[Squiggles]

We did all the contacts with contact cleaner last time (from memory)

[motorbyclist]

what size is the battery? if you're coming on the saturday ride we'll just swap batteries and if your bike runs fine while mine shits out we'll know it's the battery. if mine runs fine we'll know it's your bike.

i've had similar problems on my honda - the kill switch, starter switch, and a few other things all used a common earth, which as a particular plug was both black with carbon and slowly coming unplugged. eventually got to the point where going full lock left killed the bike and you'd need to open up the fairings to get to the plug. soon fixed with a cable tie


personally i steer clear of applying oil to electrical contacts. it normally isn't conductive, though i'm not sure about crc (i hear it isn't strictly oil)

just use some contact cleaner - CRC lectra clean and CO cleaner both do very good jobs

[Ragingrob]

what size is the battery? if you're coming on the saturday ride we'll just swap batteries and if your bike runs fine while mine shits out we'll know it's the battery. if mine runs fine we'll know it's your bike.

i've had similar problems on my honda - the kill switch, starter switch, and a few other things all used a common earth, which as a particular plug was both black with carbon and slowly coming unplugged. eventually got to the point where going full lock left killed the bike and you'd need to open up the fairings to get to the plug. soon fixed with a cable tie


personally i steer clear of applying oil to electrical contacts. it normally isn't conductive, though i'm not sure about crc (i hear it isn't strictly oil)

just use some contact cleaner - CRC lectra clean and CO cleaner both do very good jobs

I'm gonna test my battery with a proper tester today putting a load on it etc and see what it comes up with, so hopefully it'll be able to rule out the battery.

Yeah does sound like I should check the earths, now that's a matter of finding them, I dunno where the ones up by the dash are actually located?