| Author | Message | ||
     Skifastbadly |
Oh Buell, thy name is irony.... I was at a multi-brand bike shop today to pick up some oil and cable lubricant, when I saw this used Buell Lightning on the lot outside. As I was checking out, a kid and his dad were buying a helmet, and it turns out the kid is going to take the safety class next week. Good for him, I say. After I get all geared up and ready to ride away, I see the kid sitting on the Buell, and I give him a thumbs up... I should know better. Ten minutes later, I'm doing 65 on the freeway, and I notice my speedometer seems to be a bit jerky. Hmmm...wonder what that's about? I'm thinking maybe I need to lubricate something else, like a speedometer cable, when suddenly the tach starts doing the same crazy dance, only more extreme. To be exact, when I lay off the throttle, the tach jumps UP. Ok, so with both the tach and the speed-o jumping around, I'm holding my breath waiting for the thing to crap out, like maybe my stator is going or maybe my voltage regulator. When I get off the freeway though, it stops. All seems to be normal. I ride another 8 miles to home, stopping and shutting the bike off twice, it starts fine, it runs fine, and all symptoms are gone. Now: It wasn't raining. I've already removed the 77 connector and hard wired it. My voltage regulator was replaced about a year ago. Any ideas? Bad ground, perhaps? Thanks | ||
| Ulynut |
Take off the flyscreen and push in on the connectors to the instrument cluster. They may be loose, or maybe a chafed wire leading to it. | ||
| Crusty |
Pull your air box off. All of it; The cover, the top, the air filter and the base plate. Look down by the coil. there is a wire that comes out of the main wiring harness. Check to see if it's sitting against the spark plug wire boot. If it is, I bet that's your problem. All you have to do is move the wire so it isn't touching the plug lead. If the plug wire is worn at all, replace it. My wife's Ss had the same speedo problem last year. It was in the shop for a long time, total. They'd give it back, and the speedo would schitz out on the way home. They finally ran a separate wire outside the harness, as they couldn't find the fault. This past week, her bike started blowing headlight bulbs within ten minutes of replacement. Today, I found the problem to be what I just described. We both think that that's what caused the erratic speedo problem. Try it; it'll only take a short while to see if that's the problem. If it is, it's an easy fix. If not, it'll only cost you less than an hour of time. | ||
| Etennuly |
Several of us had the problem you described. There is a red wire in the steering head bundle that has a three into one splice. The wire inside the splice's heat shrink will break and just touch enough to cause an intermittent dead gage problem. You have to unwrap the bundle to find the wires. Then you have to cut the heat shrink to find the break, it can feel fine and still be broken. While you are in there, the right turn signal wire has the same issue, it also has a three into one splice in what seems to be a bad place for it. On mine, I made a single wire splice with a wire that matched the lead wire, in from the frame side. I took it up into the flyscreen where I did the triple splice. I did that on both wires, it has not had that problem since, and it makes the wire bundle in the clamp on the steering head four wires less tight, allowing for easier movement of the harness where it has to flex and move with the steering motion. | ||
| Skifastbadly |
Interesting variety of responses. I pulled the flyscreen, and reseated the connector. I took off the seat to begin disassembly of the air box. While I had the seat off, I thought I'd stow the two cables, one for the battery tender and the other for the heated vest. The one for the heated vest had bare wires showing, apparently it had been rubbing on something... So before I try anything else, I taped up the bare spot. Probably won't get to ride again until next weekend but will advise if this fixed it. As usual, thanks for all the insight. | ||
| 1125rcya |
I am no electrical expert by any means... Do your self a favor and heat shrink the bare wire rather than tape it. Maybe even duck tape your wire to something IE frame or zip tie it to other wires. | ||
| Ratbuell |
Zip ties are your friend. I use them everywhere, to secure wiring away from moving or hot parts. And, if you have to remove or relocate something...a quick clip with a pair of dikes is a lot simpler than unwrapping miles of gooey tape. And you get the added bonus of being able to SEE all the wiring for visual inspections  I just scored the "motherlode" - a screw-can container, various sizes from the teeny little three-wire ties all the way up to the huge emergency-handcuff size. 2,000 ties total, $7.99 at Costco | ||
| Xbimmer |
Zip ties are your friend. +1. I stay away from Chinese-made though, bought a 100-pak once of 8" virtually every friggin one would snap the locking tab off, sometimes just pulling the lead end through. If I can't find USA made I'll settle for Taiwan. | ||
| Skifastbadly |
The plot thickens... So the bike sat all week in the garage, and this morning I decided to ride to work. It's been a long week and I sort of forgot about the problem. I get all geared up, hop on it, start it and notice right away that the tach is hopping around. Also, since I'm in the garage, I notice that the headlight is flickering off and on. Sounds like a short, right? I think if either the voltage regulator or stator puked, I'd be down to 0 current, not hopping around like this. Thoughts? | ||
| Volume_eight |
did you ever check the wire that Crusty mentioned? Seems like you may have gotten sidetracked from that with the heated vest wires. Im curious to see what you find under the airbox. | ||
| Skifastbadly |
Tomorrow I tear off the airbox. I hate removing that thing because it seems like every time I do, I break off one of those cheesey tabs. But yeah, that's the next move. | ||
| Skifastbadly |
Weird. I pulled all the stuff off the airbox, and the wire in question was a bit chaffed, but no obvious bare wire. I wrapped it all in electrical tape anyway, just to be sure. Then I started the bike, and guess what, no low beam. I thought ok, I guess I shorted it..I finished assembly, fired it up again, the bike ran for a few seconds....AND THEN THE LOW BEAM WENT BACK ON. Now I'm REALLY confused. On the other hand, the tach was stable. | ||
| Etennuly |
I guess I could repeat my post about the power leads into the fly screen, but I'm tired tonight.  | ||
| Skifastbadly |
That's my next move, Eten. | ||
| Crusty |
Oh, hell; now I'm paranoid. I going to tear back into Terri's bike and check that splice just to ease my mind. If I find anything wrong, I'll report back here. | ||
| Skifastbadly |
Not entirely sure what is meant by 'steering head bundle'. Not behind the flyscreen? So, yesterday, I pulled off the fly screen, and investigated the headlight issue. It kept going off and on and I finally identified that issue as coupling. I think I might have fractured it a couple of years ago when I did the famous "both headlights on pin switch" maneuver. I removed it, and hardwired the wires. So the light stays on, works as planned, etc. So this morning I thought to myself "Self, the odds of the headlight flickering off and on and the tach going wacky being unrelated are slim, you probably fixed it with that mod, good for you, self!" Except I was wrong, I got on her this morning for a planned ride, and the tach was swinging around again. Bugger. Plus the engine light went on. So I hooked up the ECM Spy and wanna guess the trouble code? "Tach Ground Fault". So that pretty much validates the problem identified by Etenully. Etenully, couple of questions: How deep into the 'steering head bundle' is the splice? I feel like I'm performing throat surgery here...did you cut apart that entire bundle? And if so, what did you re-wrap with? Thanks (Message edited by skifastbadly on May 02, 2010) | ||
| Skifastbadly |
One further thought..yesterday I was revving it and moving the wires around to see if I could get the problem to occur, and it worked just fine. I couldn't re-produce the fault or the surge no matter how hard I wiggled the harness or banged the steering head against the limiter. But when the fault occurred the day before, I was sitting on the bike backing it out of the garage. Would it be possible that the problem isn't at all in the steering head but rather at the ECM, where my weight was causing the wire to ground? | ||
| Etennuly |
I looked for my pictures of when I did mine and could not find them.....  .....sorry. The harness is easy to open up. First remove the plastic bracket that holds it at the front, then cut the tape wrap. There is also a cloth type wrapping try not to cut into that. When you have bared the wires between that bracket and about 3/4 of the way back to where it goes up under the frame near the scoop, you have opened it enough. You will see two one into three splices that are wrapped with wax filled heat shrink. The red wires are the power leads to the fly screen area(power for everything in there). You can feel and bend the splices and all will seem to be good. At that point I re-wrapped mine and rode with the problem for another month. Then I reopened the harness and cut the heat shrink off. Sure enough one of the crimp splices was broken, but the heat shrink was holding it in place to make it intermittent. I then cut the splice out running a 10 inch length of equivalent wire up into the fly screen area. There I shortened the three red power leads and did the triple splice up there where the wires did not have to bend everytime the bars turned. So I figured I may as well move the other triple splice(right turn wires) up there too. This has the additional benefit of making the harness four wires thinner through the clamp at the front. IMHO much easier on all of the wires. It has not been a problem for the past twenty five thousand miles thus far. Sorry I can't find the pics. They may be here in the archives if you do a search, could even be some in the Knowledge Vault. | ||
| Skifastbadly |
It sounds like you cut up from the bottom instead of down from the top, do I have that correct? | ||
| Etennuly |
I opened it up from the front side down about 3/4 of the way back towards the tank/frame. | ||
| Rays |
This where the splices are located - it was a long time ago when I did this repair on my '06 but I think I worked upwards from where the wrapped sheath section starts. Very little cutting required, as you can see I have unwrapped the friction tape and it still has the original tape re-wrapped.  There have been a couple of 06 owners who have had a break in the instrument ground wire. That wire goes back to one of the ground points under the seat so based on your post above about seeing the issue when you were sitting on the seat it might be worth wriggling the under-seat wires while watching the instruments. | ||
| Skifastbadly |
Rays, that's super helpful. Thanks! Hopefully I can get to this tonight. "Honey, I'll be in the garage for a few minutes...." She knows the fridge is out there.... | ||
| Skifastbadly |
Ok, since I'm a believer in Occam's razor, before I sliced into the wiring I thought I'd take Ray's excellent advice and wiggle the wires under the seat. And guess what? Go on, guess. Can't guess? Oh, you got it. When I moved the wires that lead into the ECM, the tach needle hopped around. Ah HA! I removed the plugs from the ECM and inspected them for chaffing, breakage, that sort of thing, but wasn't able to see anything. So I just plugged them back in again, and voila! Just unplugging and plugging it seemed to work. I went for a 15 mile ride this afternoon and both the tach and speedo were steady. So, my theory is that the plugs weren't completely seated, else one of the wires was a bit loose. If this happens again I'll know where to go. Thanks, all. Ski | ||
| Rays |
Ski, thanks for taking the time to keep us updated - there is always something to learn here on Badweb. The black connector has the Tacho output to the instruments - it is the pink wire on the bottom left - just below the grey wire. The two ECM system grounds are the thicker black wires in pin 2 and 11 (the pins are numbered 1-6 left to right on the top row and 7 to 12 right to left on the bottom row. The system ground from pin 11 is joined in the loom to the instrument panel ground somewhere with a splice and goes to one of the ground points on the rear sub-frame. Hopefully you won't need any of this information because you are all sorted.   | ||
| Etennuly |
I hope that is your fix. Much easier than the other. Thanks to Rays pictures you know know where the same problem hit my bike. I too, had the ECM plugs work loose due to the seat hitting it when it was new. |
