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Please Help! My bike just stalled-no electrical power

  • Thread starter Thread starter Anonymous
  • Start date Start date
carmen said:
No I did not replace the fuse with one of higher amperage.
Click to expand...
Hey i was only asking?? some times we all make the silliest of errrors?
Wrench.
 
I just had the same thing happen to me today. Does anyone have an idea as to whats going on here? ? :?: :?:
 
You lost all electrical power and your wiring harness burned?

Earl


sexton7z said:
I just had the same thing happen to me today. Does anyone have an idea as to whats going on here? ? :?: :?:
Click to expand...
 
It is easy for the horns to do this. They are wired positive (ie power to them all the time), the switch grounds them out to work. A simple problem. Had it happen to me when removing the tank......

Other than that, don't panic, check along all the wires and connectors, particularly those most recently subject to tank removal etc.......
 
On my 1100e the wiring harness is not burnt up. I went to gas it and it just died. It blew the main fuse 15amp. I replace the fuse three times with the key off and it blew all three fuses. So where do I start? R/R, stator, or starter? I have extra of all of the above. I going to try the R/R first. What do you guys think?
 
Since the circuit to the starter is incomplete with the key turned off and if the engine isnt running then the stator isnt moving, so.......... I would disconnect the R/R, and replace the fuse and see if it still blows. may as well use up some of your smallest fuses because with the key off, there should be no draw at all anyway.

Earl

sexton7z said:
On my 1100e the wiring harness is not burnt up. I went to gas it and it just died. It blew the main fuse 15amp. I replace the fuse three times with the key off and it blew all three fuses. So where do I start? R/R, stator, or starter? I have extra of all of the above. I going to try the R/R first. What do you guys think?
Click to expand...
 
Stick the leads of your multitestor in where the main fuze goes. Start disconnecting stuff until the draw disappears. Earl is right I would suspect the R/R also, thats what my 1100 was doing. The R/R on mine was toast and in true GS style took the stator with. Get it running and step thru the stator papers it makes it simple to find out whats good or bad. Bill
 
On Carmen's bike, we disconnected the whole back end of the harness, pulled it free, ripped off the wrapping, and pulled the wires apart to check for damage. There was a melted wire connected through the harness between the stator and the R/R.

All wires were checked and the damaged wire replaced.

No visible damage anywhere else in the harness, except abrasion on the outer tape near the front of the gas tank. Re-wrapped the harness, and overlapped the tape under the tank. Checked all fuses.

Reinstalled the harness, reconnected the battery.

With R/R disconnected, the bike was started several times and ran fine.

With the bike idling at 2000 + RPM checked the voltage from the stator.....26.5, 24.5, and 2.3. Not too much doubt the stator is gone.

With the VOM set on resistance, ohms reading varied between the terminals, but there was electrical flow in every case...twice the ohm reading was .006....my meter stalls out at .003, so this was a long way from the factory minimum, and about as close as we could get to a dead short.


Don't know why it blew a fuse afterwards, as it happened after I left, but we will pull off the fairing and check everything before installing another stator and R/R.

Unless it were loose internally, I don't see how the starter relay/solenoid could cause the problem on its own, as it does not activate unless the start switch is engaged. Will check the switch and circuit next time.
 
Ron, are you saying that after running the bike with the stator and regulator disconnected and having it run fine without blowing a fuse, that you left, and Carmen ran the bike while you were away under the same conditions and it did blow another fuse?

Earl

argonsagas said:
Don't know why it blew a fuse afterwards, as it happened after I left, but we will pull off the fairing and check everything before installing another stator and R/R.

Unless it were loose internally, I don't see how the starter relay/solenoid could cause the problem on its own, as it does not activate unless the start switch is engaged. Will check the switch and circuit next time.
Click to expand...
 
Yup.


At least I think so......I wasn't there.

After reconnecting everything except the stator/ R-R, it started several times, and ran fine for a few minutes. Carmen keeps the bike in a wonderful state of tune, and it starts very quickly, even cold, so there was little amperage draw on the start circuit.

After that, we re-checked the battery and found it had lost about 3/4 of 1 volt....which seemed OK to me after the multiple starts and a few minutes of running.


The subsequent blown fuse was an embarrassment....I had mentioned checking the horns, but did not do so, as we had determined the R/R and stator were shot, and other wires in the harness that led to the front of the bike were OK, plus the bike was running well.
 
Hmmmm, thats a puzzle. With the Stator and R/R disconnected, the only thing that would be powered up with the ignition switched on would be the coils and ignitor box. If you disconnect the + lead to the coils and the + lead to the ignitor, your power consumption should be zero.

Earl


argonsagas said:
Yup.


At least I think so......I wasn't there.

After reconnecting everything except the stator/ R-R, it started several times, and ran fine for a few minutes. Carmen keeps the bike in a wonderful state of tune, and it starts very quickly, even cold, so there was little amperage draw on the start circuit.

After that, we re-checked the battery and found it had lost about 3/4 of 1 volt....which seemed OK to me after the multiple starts and a few minutes of running.


The subsequent blown fuse was an embarrassment....I had mentioned checking the horns, but did not do so, as we had determined the R/R and stator were shot, and other wires in the harness that led to the front of the bike were OK, plus the bike was running well.
Click to expand...
 
Thanks, Earl. I am glad someone else is puzzled.

The horns remain a possibility, but all the fuses are 10 amps, except the main, so the 10 amp light circuit fuse should have blown, not the 15 amp main.

There would be a large amperage draw if it were the starter, but I cannot conceive how the starter would draw anything once the bike was running, as it only gets electrical power when the solenoid/relay is charged. Even then it is a single-flow connection, as solenoid activation triggers a magnetic switch that then allows the current to flow from the battery direct to the starter, but otherwise does exactly nothing, electrically.

Could it be a faulty relay/solenoid? Maybe. But that would also mean a faulty starter switch that was completing the circuit without rider input. Otherwise, there is no power at the solenoid to do anything.

Is there something else, farther up into the harness, that has gone wrong?
Could be, but it is intermittent, and while the Stator/ R-R problem caused wire melting, the other(?) problem does not do that....yet it blows main fuses, and leaves the other circuits intact.

Yes...I checked the fuse box. It has no shorts.
:?: :?: :?:
 
I agree, if the starter solenoid/relay was energized, the starter would
engage and it would be very difficult not to notice that. :-) According to my wiring diagram, the first branch off the main is the R/R (you have that disconnected) The next connection is input + to the ignition switch.
The solenoid lead passes power on to the ignition, so if the solenoid is at fault, the fuse should blow even if the ignition is turned off. If its not blowing the fuse with the ignition switched off, I would remove and jump directly to battery + terminal, the + lead on the relay that feeds the ignition switch. Doing this would remove the solenoid from the test.
If then switching on the ignition still results in the main fuse blowing, I would switch the key position to park and replace the fuse and see if it still blows. There are 4 main wires coming out of the ignition switch, in on position, all four are energized. In park, only two wires are energized.
The key position will narrow down the circuits involved. I'm thinking you may have a fused, backfeeding bridge somewhere. Its about the only thing that seems plausible. Still thinking........................... :-)

Earl








argonsagas said:
Thanks, Earl. I am glad someone else is puzzled.

The horns remain a possibility, but all the fuses are 10 amps, except the main, so the 10 amp light circuit fuse should have blown, not the 15 amp main.

There would be a large amperage draw if it were the starter, but I cannot conceive how the starter would draw anything once the bike was running, as it only gets electrical power when the solenoid/relay is charged. Even then it is a single-flow connection, as solenoid activation triggers a magnetic switch that then allows the current to flow from the battery direct to the starter, but otherwise does exactly nothing, electrically.

Could it be a faulty relay/solenoid? Maybe. But that would also mean a faulty starter switch that was completing the circuit without rider input. Otherwise, there is no power at the solenoid to do anything.

Is there something else, farther up into the harness, that has gone wrong?
Could be, but it is intermittent, and while the Stator/ R-R problem caused wire melting, the other(?) problem does not do that....yet it blows main fuses, and leaves the other circuits intact.

Yes...I checked the fuse box. It has no shorts.
:?: :?: :?:
Click to expand...
 
Earl, again I thank you.

Backfeed was something I mentioned to him when we first discussed the problem, and before disconnecting anything. It was my first idea that one or more wires from the stator were doing this, or maybe the diode in the R/R had fried and was somehow shunting current in the wrong direction.

After disconnecting the stator and R/R, however, I don't see how it can happen as everything is DC and, apart from the coils, there is nothing to either draw or generate sufficient power to push back into the circuit.

All this brings us back to the starter solenoid, so I will isolate that, as you suggested. Unfortunately, this will have to wait another week as we don't yet have replacement stator and R/R....and the weather for the weekend is questionable. I got a bit of rain on the way home from the barber, just a few minutes ago.
 
This is one of the things that makes this site so great. The last post in this thread was 2003 but it came up in a search about an electrical problem that I was having and thanks to it I discovered that my bike wouldn't power because my horn was touching my throttle cable which was, in-turn, touching the frame. Cue electrical chaos.

Replaced a cooked connector and the main fuse (which looked perfect until I decided to replace it anyway on advice of this thread and it came apart at the slightest touch when I removed it) and the bike fired up like a beast.

Once again, well done to the mighty GS forums and the many wise souls that inhabit it.
 
Heh, seems the zombie thread rears its not-so-ugly head again - I too am having a similar problem, started after hitting some rain last August (yes, LAST August, haven't had the time nor patience to work on it since) and the bike died. Found the main fuse was toast. Tried a new one - toasted that one too, ad nauseum. Today was the first day I had a chance to mess with it again, pulled apart the fuse block, cleaned it good, still blew, swapped the fuse block - blew again. At least I know that's not the problem.

Tomorrow will be nice again and I'll try some of the tips in this thread. It does "appear" that when cranking it over is when it blows, doesn't do it consistently (i.e. as soon as you hit the starter button), but I didn't have the time to keep trying it. Vaguely last fall I think it blew when I turned the key on, but not 100% sure.
 
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