Dead Scura

[Chuck]

I'm in Socal, and Mark has a  Scura on his hands that will run normally for a while, then suddenly die. No lights, nothing. I told him to clean up the ground at the transmission and have a look at the ignition switch. He's replaced the relays and cleaned up the fuses. 

It has been over charging and I had him install a new regulator and dedicated ground.  Fixed that. 

Odyssey battery. Could the over charge have done something weird to the battery?

[Chuck]

Just had a call from Mark and he said the forth fuse toward the rear has blown. Any known issue with that?

[LowRyter]

Might check the fuel pump.  Not sure if it's #4.  That's what what happened to the Greenie., it coughed before it died.   Kept blowing fuses and blew the spare in a couple of miles.  

Looking at my bike, I think the diagram shows a 10A for the instruments (front to back)?  That doesn't sound right.  4th coming the other way (back to front) is a 15A  for the headlights.  I have no idea why this is printing red.

[paulnaz]

 Hi Chuck, looks like the fourth fuse goes to the ignition through a four connector molex plug. Should be Brown wire.

Paul B

[MartyNZ]

I thought " kill switch" but no that doesn't affect lights on my bike. Same with the phase sensor on the camshaft, which can be intermittent before it fails. 

Could there be a wire loose/broken in the birds nest at the battery?

Or a broken wire at the base of the ignition switch.

Or a connector coming apart at the steering head.

[docc]

6 hours ago, Chuck said:

Just had a call from Mark and he said the forth fuse toward the rear has blown. Any known issue with that?

 

6 hours ago, Chuck said:

I'm in Socal, and Mark has a  Scura on his hands that will run normally for a while, then suddenly die. No lights, nothing. I told him to clean up the ground at the transmission and have a look at the ignition switch. He's replaced the relays and cleaned up the fuses. 

It has been over charging and I had him install a new regulator and dedicated ground.  Fixed that. 

Odyssey battery. Could the over charge have done something weird to the battery?

[Tomchri]

I would go thru every connection on the bike, and recommend a regulator speaking directly to the battery. The 4 connectors under the fuse box are in shape ?

 Cheers Tom.

[Chuck]

Got it. When I arrived today, he said the turn signal fuse would blow after riding a bit. Hit all the connections involved with DeOxit. Looked at wiring we could see,of course.  No Joy.  Mark said he was done for the day, but I already was cutting cable ties off.  In just a couple of minutes, I said, looky here.  Where the wiring went to the flasher, there was one bare strand of copper that was chafed and touching the frame. I've always said that electrical issues are easy to fix..you just need to find out what needs fixing..

[audiomick]

13 hours ago, Chuck said:

. I've always said that electrical issues are easy to fix..you just need to find out what needs fixing..

There is a lot of truth in that.

 

A sneaky little bare strand like that can be a bugger to find, though.

[Pressureangle]

I used to teach my students first, "You can find 99% of all electrical faults with your eyes and fingers".

[audiomick]

14 minutes ago, Pressureangle said:

"You can find 99% of all electrical faults with your eyes and fingers".

and 99% of the last 1% can be isolated by systematic troubleshooting: calmly and logically looking at one thing at time, one step at a time, from one end of the circuit to the other.

 

I fixed an antenna combiner once (used to combine the ouput of multiple in-ear monitor senders, so you can send them all off one antenna...), and several younger colleagues were almost bowing down in awe. I had to explain how I did it: "see that big black charcoal smudge behind the power switch? That's not supposed to be there....

[docc]

I'm still keen to hear that a faulty wire in the 5amp Fuse 7 Turn Signal circuit would have blown the 10amp Fuse 4 for the Ignition Switch without there being other subterfuge afoot . . .

[Chuck]

That was another issue entirely. 

[bentombed]

make sure you earth the regulator direct to the engine block - use 10 amp wire.  trust me on this. 

[gstallons]

10a or 10ga  ?