Suddenly dead ignition

[Guest]

My bike is at the supermarket. Walked home and am posting this before I do anything else - like getting the book out and going through the GS archives. Since it's an immediate problem please pardon me not doing those preliminary things before posting a question.

I touched the starter and ignition went dead. I checked the five blade fuses but didn't have enough tools to go further plus didn't have my glasses plus had stuff that needed to go in the fridge.

Seems to me this happened to me about 12 years ago with my '79. I can't recall what fixed it but seemed like I fixed it just by disturbing some connections. Or . . . seems like there might be another fuse not so obvious as the ones under the plastic cover on the left side where all the other electrical components are.

Anybody have a suggestion while I'm getting out the books out and looking at things electrical?

It's an '82 GS850G. First time this has ever happened with this bike.

Thanks for anybody's thoughts.

Mike

************************

I drove over with the car and put the Costco battery booster thing on the battery terminals and it started right up. Battery has either had a sudden internal short - or one of my cable terminals needs to be re-set. Or I need a new battery.

I'll drive the bike home and take another long walk back to get the car. The exercise is good for me.

I'm hijacking my own thread here . . . is this legal?? . . . I wonder what the options are if a bike leaves you stranded somewhere. Rent a U-Haul trailer and tie it really good to get it home? Just a small trailer with the little edge rails. Or would an enclosed trailer be better in that you don't have to work so hard to tied it down. Has this situation happened to you and what did you do?

Does U-Haul or some other national chain rent such a thing as a "motorcycle trailer"?

I thought of pushing the bike all the way home and there was a time I'd not have given it a thought. Wow.

Anyway anyone, assuming one doesn't own a trailer, what does one do in a situation like I had, only further from home and unable to start?

Thanks for any thoughts on this.

Mike

[cowboyup3371]

Yes, UHaul has motorcycle trailers for rent though you'll want your own cargo straps to tie it down.

Do you know of any friends with trailers?

[Big T]

AAA Plus - tow up to 100 miles

[azr]

I just call Todd.

[mikerophone]

I carry a small tool set, test light or meter, some spare fuses and a bit of wire on my main bikes. Often times a kind stranger will offer to help push or jumpstart the bike but make sure you don't have the car you're jumpstarting from running.

Once you go over and know the wiring diagram, it is fairly simple to trace the route power should be going from one component to the next, that and verifying that you have gas, spark and voltage where it needs to be. If I can't get it to start I have a trailer at home and it's small enough that my daughter or lady can hook it up to my truck and come rescue me. A cheap harbor freight trailer is only about $200 and a good investment to have around anyway in my opinion.

[Brendan W]

First place to start is the battery. If it's not healthy you won't be able to do much in the way of testing. I might not be the battery's fault. The charging system could be on the blink.
I don't know what you mean by ignition went dead. Could you be a bit more specific ?
If the bike would not turn over but the horn and lights seemed ok the problem is probably on the starter motor circuit.
If it turned over but would not fire it could be as simple as a bad plug to the ignitor unit and a bit of wiggling would restore it until the next time.
Nothing to lose opening and cleaning terminals and plugs. Sometimes it even fixes things.
If you get a trailer you will need it

[tom203]

Battery is the weak link here- might just fail or a charging system issue. An onboard voltage monitor might give you enough warning to enable you to flee home.

[Bob Shaw]

I have the same bike.. I also had the same problem. I had no spark to the plugs and I check , with a volt meter and had power right up to the coils. I had checked all my fuses ( four 10 amp and one 15 amp) and all looked (LOOKED) good. My book said to remove two fuses to check the ignition. Once I did that I had spark with those fuses out. I changed all fuses with new ones and she started right up. Hope this helped.

[MikeS]

Thanks everyone for the replies. I will check out the Harbor Freight trailer. For $200 that sounds like an excellent thing to have.

To go over what happened with this incident, I came out of the supermarket with my stuff, put it in the box on the back, turned on the key, lights came on . . . everything normal. Touched the starter button. The starter started to turn and suddenly stopped. Lights went out. Everything dead. No juice.

Since the ignition was dead I didn't try and push start it. Was my thinking wrong? Should I have push started it and would that have worked? I didn't try because I thought the bike needs a battery in order to run. It doesn't have magnetos, it has coils and the coils need electricity and a battery in the circuit. With the sudden stoppage I assumed I'd blown a fuse or had a broken electrical circuit from a burned wire some other disconnect.

I checked the fuses first off. They were fine. I do carry spares.

It was in my mind that there is another fuse somewhere. I couldn't find one and came home to look in the books (which is when I posted my initial inquiry).

I drove the car back to the bike and put a battery booster on the bike's battery terminals and the lights came on and it started right up. At that point I figured I had one of two things wrong:

1. Sudden internal short of the battery causing it to fail.

2. Bad connection between positive and negative cables on the bike's battery terminals.

It turned out to be #2 and you can bet I felt pretty dumb. This same thing has happened on cars, although it's been many years.

I had the little Suzuki factory tool kit with me and so could have easily tightened the screws on the battery terminals and problem would have been solved before I even started checking fuses.

I'm a little surprised at myself for not doing a better job of basic troubleshooting. This incident did get me to thinking of just what to do in case I get stranded someday with a more serious problem. I'll buy one of those little HF trailers probably. That would allow me to get the bike home where I can do some serious troubleshooting or repairs. It's also good to know that U-Haul has motorcycle trailers - didn't know that until now.

Thanks everyone.

[mikerophone]

Good to hear it was something simple! It's often the little things that we overlook, been guilty of stuff like this myself. I sometimes have to remind myself to start with the simple stuff first. You should trickle charger battery overnight and do the Quick Charging Test. Search for it in posplayr's posts.

The battery is used to store power to run lights/horn etc and more importantly, to start the bike, then the stator provides voltage to the ignition/coils, lights etc... A push start would have possibly got you on your way and the loose connections were likely prohibiting the battery from being charged. If you haven't already make sure your connections are clean, with dielectric grease on them and tight.

It's probably a good time and to go through and do the same with all your connections.

My cheap little Harbor Freight trailer has come in handy for hauling my bikes around, I bought the motorcycle chock recently and need to mount that to the front and get a spare now that I think about it. I got mine used for $120 but it needs new tires soon - I'll upgrade them to the 4.8/4.00 x 12 when I do do and keep my existing ones as spares. They even have a folding model that is 4x8 so you'll just need a sheet of 3/4" plywood, cut in half and some tiedowns to haul a bike.

[MikeS]

The battery was fine, in fact I had taken it off a really fancy four stage intelligent charger (I bought for a new AGM airplane battery that I bought recently) just a day before. The suddenness of the loss of electrics after touching the starter button prompted me to consider that the battery had had a catastrophic short inside the case, but I don't think that's possible once I thought about it. There's six cells and even if one shorted out it wouldn't cause such a sudden and complete loss of electrics.

Looking at the Harbor Freight options, I'm liking the one that plugs into a receiver. It has a 400 lb. capacity - I think they are talking about the carrier structure itself, not the receiver capacity. I don't know exactly just what my receiver capacity is (I forget just now) but I'll check. The GS850 weighs significantly more than 400 lbs. but if I'm not going very far I think this thing would work. It's the receiver capacity that would worry me with this idea.

I've had a GS850 since 1997, a 79 and now this 82 and not once in all that time have I ever been stranded. And I ride the bike every day - it's my daily driver. If I had had my wits about me I wouldn't have gotten stranded this time - all I had to do was tighten my terminal connectors. Somehow I got fixated on the idea I'd blown a fuse - some mystery fuse that I just knew was there somewhere but didn't know where. Some sort of "master fuse" that carries just the starting voltage when the starter is engaged. That's what I really thought was causing the loss of electrics.

If this same event had happened with a car the first thing I would have done is check the battery connections. Since it happened on the bike I thought it was a mystery fuse and didn't even check the battery connectors, although I checked the fuses twice before giving up and walking home. I guess I'm losing it. Sad. It's some form of mental deterioration. Beginnings of Alzheimer's maybe. Some form of dementia . . . there's lots of different kinds of dementia. Suzukiosis?

[mikerophone]

Suzukiosis?! That's a good one, and I surely have it!

Your logic and reasoning is sound and I've had this happen before on both bikes and cars where you have voltage for lights etc, but not enough current to crank the starter, all because the lugs on the battery terminals were not tight enough to carry that current. If anything you get a click! And that's it. Yeah, no mystery master fuse, just the hot all the time one on the bottom spot on the fuse box.

I think you're right on the harbor freight capacity, 400lbs would be tongue weight - enough for a dirt bike but surely not an 850.

[Redman]

You mentioned about having proper tools and such, which is important.

But, the First Rule of Troubleshooting: Observe and identify the symptoms.

Folks were giving you answers/help relative to the original statement of the problem of "lost ignition".
Then later, after going back, you mentioned that when connected the other battery thing, "the lights came back on"...... ah, that was the real problem all along, lost power to everything not just the ignition. Once you noticed that, then you were able to take care of it.

Good that you got it going again. Your persistence and trying something else worked out.

.