Car vs. Moto Vibration - Coil Relay Mod?

[82Shafty]

Well so much for my "brilliant" insight - hehe!!!

Regards,

Maybe will keep ya around just a tad longer LOL.

[Matchless]

Hopefully more riders will analyse the failure and we can get some sort of consistancy on the feedback. The type of relay, how and where mounted etc. basically a genuine Bosch or Hella headlamp type relay of 30A or 40A should be of high quality, some of the cheaper clones may be the problem.
Then saying this any component can fail regardless of the quality.

[rusty boltz]

Two excellent suggestions were made earlier in this thread. 1: why not try suspending the insides of the relay in a soft silicone such as rtv? Not too sure about the heat factor but there are plenty of high temp RTV silicones available. I have never tried this but it seems like a good idea. Maybe even epoxy such as solid state electronics. If vibration is killing your relays then restricting movement inside the relay (except for the switch) would kill vibration. I might give this a try, do a little myth busting myself.
2: I believe salty monk has the absolute failsafe and thats to carry the jumper wire. If your relay goes out, just pull it out and jump it, get home! Just remember to pull the jumper out once you get where you need to be or you may be push starting you bike later. I have a relay on my horn and my coils, both pulled from under the hood of a junkyard car (electric fan and fuel pump), and ride 60 miles to and from work 5 days a week down some hairy roads. Have yet to have a problem with a relay and if I did I would just swap the relay from the horn over or jump the it. I plan on ordering some relays for a case skid steer and testing those out. A skid steer has no suspension whatsoever (especially with foam filled tires), you feel every pebble you drive over. And we break concrete with them, you want to talk about vibration!
Anyway, salty monk has the answer. Carry a jumper and be familiar with how to hook it up and get home.
And matchless hit the nail on the head ANY component can fail regardless of quality or conditions, you just have to be prepared.

[Planecrazy]

my bike doesn't exactly ride like a Caddy.

Well get to it, Pal! You too can have a bike that rides like a Caddy!

Maybe we'll keep ya around just a tad longer LOL.

I think I proved with the comment above how valuable my presence here still is, hehe!

Regards,

[salty_monk]

2: I believe salty monk has the absolute failsafe and thats to carry the jumper wire. If your relay goes out, just pull it out and jump it, get home! Just remember to pull the jumper out once you get where you need to be or you may be push starting you bike later.

Anyway, salty monk has the answer. Carry a jumper and be familiar with how to hook it up and get home.

In my post above I suggested "hotwiring" in the relay socket for the wires connected to Pin 86 (the SWITCHED live) to Pin 87 for just this reason. This puts you back to "as OEM". When you turn off ignition or kill switch the power to coils would be cut.

Of course you could truly "hotwire" them direct from the battery if your bike doesn't have enough volts to run "as OEM" by jumping Pin 30 to Pin 87 - In this case you'd have to remove the jumper when you switch it off as you'd risk a flat battery & damaged coils if you didn't.

(I'm not even sure you could switch off the engine without pulling the jumper with it wired this way as the coils would have power even with the ignition & kill switches off...)

Hope that clears it up.

Dan