| Author | Message | ||
     Ratbuell |
OK, so I'm on the highway for most of the day today. Ride about 45 miles, neutral light starts to flicker, brighter and brighter, until it's just "on". I'm traveling in fifth gear, at...uh..."extralegal" speeds. Definitely NOT in neutral. Fourth to pass. Fifth. Fourth to pass again, back to fifth. No change, running fine, shifting fine. (I'm having thoughts of when my mainshaft bearing went on the S1W, locking it into 2 gears at once...with ill effects...and thinking "no trapdoor in an XB") Ride for about 25 miles, on the slab, with the light lit. Get to a toll booth, go down thru the gears to pay my $2 - "I want my two dollars!" - and once I hit *actual* neutral, the light stops acting up and it works fine for the rest of the day (hundred more miles or so, stop and go combined with slab). No other issues, no other lights, no hiccups, ran like a champ the whole time. I'll pull the front pulley cover and check wires, but my guess is, if I had a wire rubbing to ground, it wouldn't have "fixed" itself and behaved for the rest of the day. Neutral switch? | ||
| Whisperstealth |
Don't know, but, "I want my 2 dollars!"  | ||
| Two_buells |
short in the switch maybe... | ||
| Yamafreak |
Ride It  | ||
| Ourdee |
Killer paperboy. =] | ||
| Ratbuell |
Oh, have no fear...it still gets ridden. My only concern is if there's a piece of metal big enough to ground out the switch on the trans, floating around inside there somewhere. Now, if I could come up with a set of front-wheel skis like the paperboy had...  "go that way *really really* fast. if something gets in your way....turn" | ||
| Pauley2000 |
Sounds like you're better off dead, man. -p | ||
| Fordrox |
I see I am not the only one that caught the Better off Dead quote. let me get on my gold wide world sports jacket and in my best Howard Cosell voice....Truly a sight to behold. A man beaten. The once great champ, now, a study in moppishness. No longer the victory hungry stallion we've raced so many times before, but a pathetic, washed up, aged ex-champion. | ||
| Dennis_c |
When the light comes on again head to the nearest toll booth and pay your $2.00  | ||
| Matchanu |
That's the 2 dollar warning light, toll booths have senors set up a few miles before the gate to warn motorcycles that you need to cough up 2 bucks. The senors active the neutral light because it's green, like money. You never heard of this? | ||
| Ratbuell |
Of COURSE. I should have thought of that. Because it's so safe and easy to pull out a wallet, thumb out $2, and hold it while riding... and yes, I know your post was tongue-in-cheek; so is mine LOL | ||
| Rays |
Ratbuell, the neutral switch on XB's is actually a switch and not a contact that grounds on something in the gearbox. So, it can fail in such a way that the light can come on when it is in gear (not a great failure mode if someone happens to fiddle with your bike while it is parked and puts it in gear - you come along and see it is in neutral and fire the starter while you are standing beside it.....). Anyway, I digress. My '06 starting showing intermittent neutral light illumination in winter and in my situation the light would go out when the engine was well warmed up. Of course whenever I took the bike in for service work it was always working and the dealer basically didn't believe there was a fault so I lived with it and was always careful to make sure it was in neutral before starting it. Eventually I started having intermittent 'machine-gun' starter solenoid symptoms and I finally had the penny drop and related the two events. The dodgy neutral switch had a resistive internal contact and at times this would be resistive enough to cause the starter solenoid issues. The low current draw of the neutral light allowed the lamp to still light up (slightly duller) but would generate enough voltage drop for the starter relay to drop in and out. If you ever have a chattering starter (exactly the same symptom as a low battery / bad battery connection) - try pulling the clutch in as that will bypass the neutral switch. You can easily measure the switch in situ as the connector pulls straight off and there is a protruding contact that you can readily get to with a multimeter. Changing this switch on a Uly is a bit of a pain because the front pulley partially covers it I see people regularly mention that the pulley needs to be removed. With a little work you can modify a socket so it will go in behind the pulley (you do have to get the belt out of the way) to undo / tighten the switch. This is what the switch looks like and how a cheap socket can be modified to make this a simple job.  Now having said all that, because the neutral light is grounded via this switch it is also possible that you have the wire from the instrument panel to the neutral switch worn through and intermittently grounding somewhere. If you can catch this in it's failure mode it will be easy to isolate - remove the pulley cover and disconnect the neutral switch. If the wire is grounded somewhere the light will stay on. You can then confirm the switch is falsely 'made' with a multimeter. If it is a little more elusive then at least you know where to start looking. The first place I would look for wire damage would be where the loom goes through the loom guide at the headstock. In standard form there is quite a sharp machined edge at the mounting lugs. | ||
| Ratbuell |
Thanks for the writeup. I know how the switch works - which is why I'm wondering if there's something floating around in my tranny that made it turn on the light. Only reason I think that as opposed to a chafed wire is the fact that going into ACTUAL neutral 'wiped' whatever-it-was off the switch contact inside the transmission, and it worked fine for the rest of the day (which was not all slab, but had quite a bit of in-town stop-and-go riding). I did recently have the belt replaced; I'm gonna pull the front pulley cover to make sure nothing got pinched in there. | ||
| Pkforbes87 |
At least it won't fail like the tuber switches fail. I have to pull my wallet out every day to get an ID and gain access through the gate of a military base. Have to rest the bike on the kickstand because I'm too short to get my ass off the seat while both feet are on the ground.. kickstand down + clutch engaged + ecm thinks the tranny is in gear = engine dies. Gate guards thought my X1 was a huge piece of crap after watching it die every day until I got the switch fixed. What a PITA that was.. |
