| Author | Message | ||
     Brinnutz |
Ok, well..I was riding with the GF and stopped at my sisters. (I have an '02 Cyclone M2L) When we left and went to start the bike, it didn't turn over the first try. It actually just "clicked" a bunch like when a battery doesn't have enough juice to start a car. So, I stopped at the gas station on the way home, did it again. I bought a new battery replaced the old one since I assumed that was the culprit. Ride for a day, and on my way to my sister's now husbands house for the bachelor party, I stop to snag a Red Bull from the gas station. Well, it did the clicking thing again, and would not start...PERIOD. I had to push start the bike (took several tries, there wasn't much of a hill). Once I got it running via push start, it ran fine, continued on and then push started when I left his place to head back on the 30min ride. So, I ask you all, what could it be causing this problem? Starter? Solenoid? I have no idea, but need to fix it ASAP! | ||
| Reepicheep |
Pop the connector between the VR and the Stator and go from there. Check resistance with the bike stopped (pin to pin, and each pin to ground). Start it up with that cable disconnected, and measure it's AC voltage at idle. Measurements that you should see are in the factory service manual, and posted in many places here on badweb. Another test is to pop off the primary chain inspection cover (the little one with two bolts) and take a deep whiff. Dead stators usually smell awful. | ||
| Brinnutz |
Ok, I'll check that when I get home from work tonight. But, the problem with checking the resistance of the cable @ idle, is I have to push start the bike. It won't start otherwise, it just clicks really fast like it doesn't have enough juice or something. (Message edited by brinnutz on June 10, 2008) | ||
| Doerman |
Does it start with jumper cables? If so, then that is pointing in the direction of the charging system. (Message edited by doerman on June 10, 2008) | ||
| Bill0351 |
Do you have a battery charger? Make sure the battery is fully charged and press the starter. If it starts completely normally then at least you won't have to mess with the starter and you can just try to figure out why the battery keeps going dead. I had a similar problem with another bike I had, and it turned out to be the voltage regulator. Good luck. Bill | ||
| Reepicheep |
I just topped off the battery with a trickle charger before diagnosing... Less chance of unintentional welding then jumping things, though a jump would work as well. And when it is running, you want to measure AC volts on those pins, not resistance. I don't want you to bake your meter... | ||
| Fasted |
check all connections to starter, battery, and ground strap before anything else......easiest to check......loose or corroded can cause MANY electrical problems and should be checked FIRST, even if you THINK they are ok | ||
| Brinnutz |
Thanks all, please keep the ideas coming. I don't want to go in and rip the starter out and it could be something totally simple! I'll be checking cables first, along with the voltage of the battery before I try anything. I don't know if I can get a charger, but a jump from a car will provide the same thing right? | ||
| Reepicheep |
Yes. Don't leave the car hooked up any longer then necessary though. It should be fine. Or disconnect the bike terminals and let the car charge the battery for 15 minutes or so, then disconnect the car and re-hook up the bike and just start off the battery. That would be the safest. | ||
| Natexlh1000 |
The relays and fuses on my X1 looked clean on the outside but the contacts corroded underneath. The repair took about 10 minutes: Take each fuse out, clean the contacts, spritz the sockets with WD40 and plug them back in a few times. | ||
| Brinnutz |
Nate, you're bike was having the same malfunctions? i.e.- just clicking but not turning over? Sometimes, it would start to turn over, but struggled and then went to the clicking. | ||
| Hootowl |
You might want to check your ignition switch. The current for the starter solenoid runs through it. If you can feel your ignition switch warming up, it's a clue that it is introducing enough resistance to keep your starter from working. If there isn't enough current to drive the solenoid into the contacts at the end of its travel, all it will do is click. Those contacts at the end are what provides the current path for the starter windings. Try jiggling the key a bit with the ignition switch in the on position, and see if that doesn't let it turn over. The switch is a standard HD part, but you can get replacement switches from americansportbike.com for much cheaper than HD. Much cheaper. I went ahead stuck a relay in mine, so the switch no longer carries the starter solenoid current. | ||
| Brinnutz |
Great ideas all around. I don't have class in the AM so I'm going to put some hours in on the bike tonight. Wish me luck! I'll have access to the web in the garage via my cell phone, so I'll be checking back intermittently if anyone comes up with other ideas/if I fix it! | ||
| Brinnutz |
Well so far, battery voltage was down to 9.3V before doing anything. Removed cables, charged via jumpers from car for over 10 min. Voltage read 11.73V. Bike started. At the advice of Nate, I checked all fuses. All were corroded. Replacing them now, and seeing if it persists. (Message edited by brinnutz on June 11, 2008) | ||
| Brinnutz |
Ok...So, it's still there. Things I checked so far (it was night and I don't have much for lights): Ground Strap seems to be intact, doesn't look like any corrosion. Battery cables are good to go, double checked them. I tried to feel the ignition if it was warm, but need to take off the fairing to be able to do that (Crossroads bars). For all you electricians, who may be able to find the culprit: After charging the battery to 11.73V, I rode the bike for about 30-45 min. Check voltage and it was down to 11.33V. Bike would try to turn over, and did sometimes but just didn't fire, and had to ask for a jump from a Security guy who was blocking the main highway I was on because there was a fatal accident further up. Semi vs. Car, not good. So, after that jump, I knew I couldn't shut her off again as the battery was not getting a charge. Continued on (seeing how she holds up for the trip), put another 60+ miles on her without stopping. Stopped at the gas station a mile from my apartment and filled up. The bike wouldn't barely fire the solenoid (the clicking noise), as it was clicking extremely slowly, about once every second or two. Push started it just fine and rode her home to check the voltage, all the way down to 9.3V. Glad I had taken my jumper cables with me. I had a feeling it's something more. Can anyone explain to me the charging system and how it works on the Buell? I never took the time to read/learn about it. I understand how it works on cars for the most part, but I need to read up on the stator and voltage regulator, etc. Thanks! | ||
| Reepicheep |
You are just not charging the battery... Even when it is too weak to turn over the starter (very demanding), it will continue to run the bike for a while. At 60 to 120 miles, you were *really* close to the point where the bike just shuts down and won't even bump start... you were lucky. If anyone ever finds themselves in this situation, pulling the fuse to turn off the headlight will let you get a LOT further... Dave Barr crossed a good chunk of Europe doing this... charge it over night, run it during the day only, no headlight. The way the charging system works is as follows (in a nutshell)... A collection of strong permanent magnets are attached to a steel bell that is bolted to splines on the crank. When the crank is turning, these magnets are rotating. The RPM of the engine is the RPM of the bell, and the velocity of the crank is the velocity of the magnetic field rotation. A very long piece of copper wire is wrapped around some ferrous steel plates in a particular (fussy) pattern, that makes about a 4 inch "hoop" of wire coiled around a steel frame, all coated with epoxy. This is your stator. A magnetic field drops off exponentially with distance, so the tolerances are pretty tight. Its called a stator, because its the static bit. The spinning magnets are the rotor. They could spin the wire and leave the magnets stationary, but then they would need to figure out how to get the wire to not twist up. So the magnets on the steel bell just about wrap the stator, and spin quickly around it. When they do so, the magnetic field induces an alternating current (a sine wave in fact) on the copper coils. The amount of electricity is directly proportional to the speed of the motor, and the mechanical resistance that spinning stator bell feels is directly proportional to the electricity generated. I remember doing a machines and power lab where we spun this *big* motor up to very high RPM's... disconnected the power to let it spin, then shorted out the motors power inputs. A motor and a generator is basically the same thing, one is just getting electricity in and putting force out, the other is taking force in and putting electricity out. Anyway, when we took the motor leads (which was not just coasting) and shorted them out, we made it a generator. You would not *believe* the bang that made. It was like somebody stuck a crowbar in the spokes of a wheel. It made quite the impression on me. Anyway, thats just to illustrate that there is no free ride... your engines mechanical energy is being used to create electricity. The more electricity, the more mechanical energy is pulled. The good news is that 2 HP goes a *really* long way, thats 1500 watts or so. Thats a bright light bulb. So where were we... the power is not flowing out of the stator wires, it is an AC wave form who's frequency is directly proportional to engine speed. This voltage goes to the voltage regulator. Our bikes have a "shunt" type regulator. The AC voltage climbs from zero up towards its peak (60 some volts I believe). When it climbs past the current battery voltage, it is flowing current into the battery. So the wave form is trying to climb in voltage. To do this, it must fully supply all demanded current everywhere on the bike, and feed quite a bit of current into the battery... the whole point of a battery is to resist voltage changes. So it pumps more and more current, and finally the voltage starts to climb again over the nominal 12.2 volts or so for the battery. It climbs up to the desired "regulation target" for the voltage regulator, say 13.8V, at which point a reverse biased zeener diode in the regulator suddenly starts to flow current, and that current flows to the gate of an SCR (Silicone Controlled Rectifier). This is basically a diode with an electronic on switch. So the 13.8 V zeener starts to leak current, which then flows to the gate of the SCR, which then basically short circuits the output of the stator, shunting the power directly to ground. (This is not as crazy of an approach as it sounds, but thats a topic for another day) The way an SCR works is that once it is turned on, it stays turned on, until current stops flowing through it. Fortunately, this is an AC wave form coming out of the stator, so when that zeener trips on, it stays on for the top half of the next wave form, then the system automatically resets. So every time the crank rotates once, the voltage climbs until it has pumped enough current into the battery to raise its voltage to 13.8 or 14.2 or whatever, then it "throws away" the rest of the crank rotation to ground (which pumps heat into the stator and voltage regulator). It resets every time the wave form crosses back to zero, which it will do with each crank rotation. This all works because the battery acts like a big spring, a big damper for the system. Thats why I think a bad battery can hurt the rest of your charging system, it stresses VR and Stator more, its "bumpier". Kind of like how a rigid bike will fall apart relative to a suspended bike. Thats an only slightly over simplified version of how the system works. Its cool stuff. (Message edited by reepicheep on June 11, 2008) | ||
| Court |
Zener | ||
| Road_thing |
You rang?  rt | ||
| Brinnutz |
Reepicheep, Thanks for the awesome post. Granted you said it was dumbed down, but geez there sure was a lot of info there! Thanks again. I have a much better understanding now. Court, Don't have the book in front of me, but you're thinking it's the Zener Diode? I don't even know where to order one from or even know where it is on the bike... RT, I'm guessing that's the Zener diode? Where is it located on the bike? How do I tell if the Zener is bad? | ||
| Hootowl |
It's built in to the regulator, the little black box with the fins on it near the front of your muffler. Do you have a service manual? There are tests in there that will tell you whether the regulator is working. | ||
| Road_thing |
Nutz, that picture is of a Zener diode off of a late '60's Triumph Bonneville. It was a real primitive voltage regulator--when the voltage in the battery got too high, the Zener shunted the excess charging current to ground ("earth," as the Brits liked to call it) and shed the resulting heat to the atmosphere via a finned heat sink mounted up under the headlight, out in the breeze. Listen to Reepicheep and Hootowl on this one--I'm just here to stalk Court! rt | ||
| Brinnutz |
I have a service manual yes. I will have some things to put up for sale today as I need money bad. Student, working part time with a ton of money to shell out getting ready/paying for homecoming/paying bills is going to wear me thin! I'm almost broke as it is! | ||
| Brinnutz |
Well, pretty sure that its the VR. The stator passed a resistance check within spec of the manual. Reading on how to verify VR checks and such, but it's already off the bike. Hoping to go to nearest Harley shop and get one. Buell shop is 1.5 hrs away, so not really an option. | ||
| Brinnutz |
Well, I got it fixed. Called local Harley shops. They said nope, different than Sportster VR. So, I called Jim Bailey's HD/Buell, they had one VR for the M2 in stock. Downside, they closed at 4pm, it was 2pm, and It's a 1.5-2hr drive. Well, taking some back roads, and such in my car, I made it there at ten til 4pm. Bike is running just fine now..=) |
