Mother's bike won't start again....

[JBubble]

Series of events:

Friday Night
-Change belts and oil (found flakes in oil)

Saturday Morning
-Wheel bike out of house and fire up. Bike starts normally, sounds good.
-Shut bike off and wheel other bikes off porch and finish gearing up.
-Try to start Mother's bike again. Not happening. Belts look like they're trying to move, there's a heavy clicking (not sounding like a solenoid clicking). Lights work, guages sweep.
-Jump Mother's bike off my bike and it runs fine, though it needs a valve check since its not idling well.

We went off on a long ride and had to jump the bike after the first two fuel stops. After we stopped and ate, the bike miraculously started on its own. Then we had to jump it again after we stopped at our last fuel stop.

I took a video of what its doing, sound isn't great, but it'll give you an idea of what we're seeing. I'll post it up soon.

Ideas? What should we check?

Oh, the bike is an 03 620 with 40k miles.

[somegirl]

MrI says you guys should check the valves.

[JBubble]

Adding to it, he just hooked up the battery (which is less than a month old) to the trickle charger and its charging the battery, which apparently means its below 80%.

He just mumbled something about a stator....

MrI says you guys should check the valves.

Well yeah. I think we were hoping for an easily fixable electrical gremlin as opposed to having to do a valve check right now when we have good weather and only one car to use.

[Speeddog]

Check the battery ground wire where it attaches to the crankcase on the right side.
Remove the bolt, clean the terminal and the case surface around the bolt.
Use a little dielectric grease on it, bolt it back up.

Try to start it, and feel the cable connections at the battery, the ground wire at the cases, and the positive wires at the solenoid and starter.
If they're getting hot, there's resistance due to a bad/corroded connection.

If you are going to remove the connection at the starter make *sure* the threaded stud isn't turning when you turn the nut.

[JBubble]

Thanks Nick. We'll look at that, gonna charge the battery up first.

Here's a video:

VID 00001 20090614 1107

[GAAN]

All main electrical connections are clean and solid

Battery Pos/Neg cleand and solid

Starter post clean and solid

Ground to case clean and solid

Little ground on computer clean and solid

battery has been charging for a couple hours now...Stator issue?

I put a lightweight flywheel on it a couple years ago, if the bolt backed out would it disrupt the stator's operation?

[Speeddog]

If you can get the bike started, check the voltage at the battery with it running.

Should be 13.5 - 14 V or so with moderate engine rpm.

That will tell you if the charging system is working.

Voltage on a freshly charged battery should be 12.5 V or so.

[Popeye the Sailor]

MrI says you guys should check the valves.

Do'h. Yes, but just to get rid of the fact that they're probably woefully out of whack. It should still start.


Dang wife-quoting my drug induced haze. I'm locking her up more.

[somegirl]

Do'h. Yes, but just to get rid of the fact that they're probably woefully out of whack. It should still start.


Dang wife-quoting my drug induced haze. I'm locking her up more.

You had some justification for it when I questioned you on it too.

[teddy037.2]

was it pee'd on?

[herm]

i bet it isnt charging....
figure out a way to insure a good connection between the reg/rect. (zip ties work well)

[Duck-Stew]

2% of the time with charging/starting issues the problem is the stator on a 3-phase system.  It's a Nippon-Denso.  They just don't break (98% of the time that is YMMV).

The starter could be suspect...  Try removing that fancy-assed lower cowl of yours and then as you're pressing the 'START' button, try tapping the starter with a hammer (not hard...just a 'nudge' if you will) to see if that changes the outcome.

Report back your results.

[GAAN]

Battery on tender for 6 hrs hasn't brought it to fully charged yet

but

the bike starts

so either I make the beast with two backsed up the priming of the battery out of the box

or

battery not charging (but I have to say that this is the strangest low battery behavior I have ever seen)


Next question

How many miles can a duc go on just the battery with a system that is not charging?

[bigiain]

seen)
Next question

How many miles can a duc go on just the battery with a system that is not charging?

Have you go hard wired headlights on that one?

I'd expect to go at least several hours on a fully charged battery on my bike with the headlight switched off, maybe an hour or so with the headlight switched on... I'd guess the fuel injected bikes would probably do something like half of that (my dinosaur tech carbs don't need the electric fuel pump to keep them supplied with fuel, or the brainbox powered up to open the injectors.)

big

[GAAN]

Yeah, head lights always on and FI

so if the system was not charging, there is no way I could have ridden the 250+ miles that I did yesterday


My my toolbox and multimeter is not here so trying to figure out electrical issues with assumption based logic is