Hi all,
So I went to start my '94 M900 today. It was a bit chilly, but nothing crazy, and it was reeeeeealllly struggling to turn over (it had come off a battery tender only minutes earlier), and after a while, I saw smoke around the head tube. There is an earth under the regulator that had melted through the insulation.
It has always been a bit of a slow starter, but it has been getting worse. I have original coils, a battery that is about 2 years old and doesn't get much use, and an Ignitech TCIP4 ignition unit.
What would you say needs fixing, aside from fixing the melted wire?
Thanks!
May not be your problem, but when my bike started to start, it turned out to be the battery. The battery was about 3 years old and always on tender...it fully conked out about 6 weeks after slow starts. Once a new battery was in, it started up like a champ.
Perhaps test your battery with a volt/amp meter to see how much life is left?
I'd inspect/clean all the grounds and battery connections.
My 96 behaves pretty similar regarding the slow crank as does my SBK. Upgraded cables help.
You have a bad ground. Remove and clean the ground at the battery, frame, and engine. Carefully inspect the crimps at the connectors for corrosion . If in doubt replace. And do replace the regulator ground wire. Then take your voltmeter and attach the probes to battery negative and a starter mounting bolt. Crank the engine. If you read more than .5 V find what you missed
Sorry for the late reply. So I should be getting less than 0.5V when it's cranking or when it's idling?
Worst case for the electrics is when cranking. You melted a ground because too much current was flowing thru it, or it too much resistance and acted like a heating element.
That ground needs help.
If battery ground and bike ground are not well connected, it's no different than having a dead battery.
Quote from: Howley on September 10, 2011, 09:54:15 PM
Sorry for the late reply. So I should be getting less than 0.5V when it's cranking or when it's idling?
cranking
Oh poo.
Yes.
Check the ground under the battery box...
and the one behind the right rearset to the cases.
The battery box one is sweet, I cleaned that up real good. The engine one not so much. Say for example I cleaned all of them and still had a problem, is there any way to check the grounds individually?
Same way I told you before, except over each connection and wire. On individual connections look for less than .2 volts. Oh, charge and load test that battery and check your charging system output since you had a regulator problem.
So to check (for example) the engine ground, I would multimeter just before to just after the connection?
Yes, you are putting the meter in parallel, which is measuring the voltage consumed by the wire, connection or load (motor, bulb etc.). A wire or connection ideally would be 0.
Roger. That makes sense.
It was the engine/frame ground. The frame connection was loose. Tightened it up and tested it and it read under 0.5V. Thanks for the help!!