| Author | Message | ||
     Mayerhd |
2008 Ulysses 1200 miles. Here are the symptoms: Place key in ignition, turn key on, turn run/stop button to run, listen for fuel pump, hear fuel pump, push start button, click. Lights go out, only light on dash is the high beam indicator, headlamps are not on. So I step back and start procedure over, put key in ignition, turn key to run, set run/stop to run, listen for fuel pump, no fuel pump, hit start button, nothing. Pull key from the bike, now four lights on dash are on, high beam, oil, check engine, and neutral. These lights stay on until I disconnect the battery, with or with out the key in the ignition. This has now happened to me twice, the first time I was able to get the bike going by removing the negative battery terminal and retighten it, the next time was yesterday the the Uly was having nothing to do with starting. No matter what tweaking I tried. Over the past few weeks the bike has exhibited other interesting quirks, it will sneeze or cough violently the check engine will flash for about 2 seconds and then she'll go on to run great. This has happened at every speed, from sitting at a light to running the interstate, and it has quit once or twice. On perhaps another interesting note, when I first bought the bike the neutral indicator would not light up, it only came on after the first 200 miles or so. I have installed the PIAA 510's to the bike, I wired them directly to the battery and spliced the relay to the front auxiliary plug. This is the only farkle that I have added and the bike exhibited some interesting behavior before their install (neutral light). So has anyone had or heard of anything of this nature? I am hoping that it is a simple fix, (don't we all hope that). In hind sight I didn't check the battery and now the dealer has it. I just thought I would throw this out there in case anyone else has had this issue or in case anyone else develops it. I'll post what I hear from the dealer when they call. Thanks in advance for any ideas. | ||
| Chris_socal |
Sounds like the battery terminal is not making good contact. Make sure that everything is tight and flush. Flush being as important as tight. Those terminals don't have a lot of surface space on them, and if you have an O-ring terminal connector on there for the lights, you will want to make sure it has good surface space on it. If the battery terminal is not the issue I would take it to the dealer. My 08 was acting up on me, and then stopped working. When I took it to the dealer, they found a bad pin on one of the connectors going to / from the ECM. Once they fixed it the bike was fine. -Chris (Message edited by chris_socal on May 14, 2008) | ||
| Mayerhd |
So a little update: The dealer has now had the bike since last Tuesday. The tech working on the bike has been in contact with Buell Tech Service as he has not been able to track the electrical problem down. They said that there was a faulty connection somewhere under the seat that they did replace but this didn't solve the problem so they are having to trace it further. The tech came in today (Sunday) to work on it too. Makes me nervous to have an 08' with this serious of a electrical problem. | ||
| Bartimus |
Electrical problems are tough to troubleshoot. Sounds like they are doing all they can to get the issue resolved. I wouldn't worry about it, Like Chris's problem, once it's found, it will be repaired, and will not likely happen again. | ||
| Orangeulius |
After multiple trips to the dealer last year and the same symptoms you had minus the coughing, I replaced my battery which was always marginal. All my quirky electrical problems disappeared. The old battery met HD specs but was the problem. Maybe the addition of the PIAA's drew down the battery to marginal status. May be worth a check. | ||
| Mayerhd |
And another update. . . So, the good news is my dealer has been in conversation with Buell Tech Service today. The bad news is, Buell wants my dealer to take pictures of my wiring harness and then remove said harness and send it in to Buell so they can take a look at it to try to determine what the heck went wrong with it. I wonder how long I get to be without my bike now? | ||
| Darthane |
...if your dash is on with the key out, you've got a short from a HAAT feed to a run feed somewhere in the bike. It could be a direct short, or it could be something more devious. A flat out replacement of the wiring harness should fix it, but you'll have to rewire your PIAAs once you get it back and that's probably the first thing they'll look at when trying to figure out what's wrong. As to how long it'll take, well, I suppose that depends on how long it takes them to get a new harness. I'm not sure how much vehicle disassembly is necessary to replace it, but look at the bright side, it can't be nearly as hard as pulling the damned IP harness out of a prototype car. >.< | ||
| New12r |
Electrical problems are tough to troubleshoot. Only if you dont understand electricity... | ||
| Gotj |
Electrical problems are tough to troubleshoot. Only if you dont understand electricity... My, my my, there's no conceit in your family....} | ||
| Darthane |
Trust me, they can still be very difficult to troubleshoot. Just because you know what the possible causes are doesn't necessarily make it any easier to FIND. I've had vehicles CAN systems fail because someone cut a hole in the carpet under a front seat to pass wiring through, the end result being a nearly invisible slit in the insulation of two wires and a single broken strand of wire from one caught in the slit of the other one and shorting the system. The CAN network literally runs a circle around the entire car, exterior and interior. ...just because I could tell it was shorted to ground didn't make it any easier to find the culprit, believe me. Our bikes, while an order of magnitude less complicated, smaller, and far easier to get to most areas, still provide a plethora of unvisible or unlikely areas for issues to occur. | ||
| New12r |
...just because I could tell it was shorted to ground didn't make it any easier to find the culprit, believe me. But was it really HARD?? Finding the PROBLEM was not hard, as you stated, finding the location was time consuming, not HARD eh?? | ||
| New12r |
My, my my, there's no conceit in your family.... No. Again, not tough to TROUBLESHOOT IF YOU KNOW WTF YOU ARE DOING. Maybe, like stated above time consuming to locate, but never HARD. | ||
| Darthane |
I guess you're just looking at it differently than I am. I don't consider diagnosing the problem to be separate from fixing the problem. Until both are complete, it's still a problem. FINDING the problem in my above example was indeed hard. DIAGNOSING it was easy. I had a horn go off on a vehicle on the line up in Oakville, non-stop, as long as the vehicle had power. The horn is powered via a switched B+ feed going through a module relay whose coil is low-side driven. DIAGNOSIS: Low side of coil is grounded. EASY diagnosis. PROBLEM: Instrument panel had been left under a leaky roof during a rain storm, unbeknownst to anyone. Water had trickled inside the multifunction switch's clockspring mechanism and - only when the steering column was tilted up - would short the horn switch. Gaining access to the wiring required the steering column to be down, which removed the short. It wasn't until we concluded that it was an intermittent in the clockspring (after checking the entire system visually and electrically and finding no issues) and we tore apart the steering column to remove said device could we hear the water inside it. 3 people + ~15 man-hours. HARD solution. Hard trumps easy every time, IMO, so if one side of the equation is hard, the entire thing was hard. (Message edited by darthane on May 22, 2008) | ||
| Gotj |
"Electrical problems are tough to troubleshoot. Only if you dont understand electricity... " I just HAD to tweak. It was TOO easy.  | ||
| New12r |
Darth, I just look at things differently I guess. I have been stumped before, and took many man hours to find the cause of a problem and never thought of it as hard, more like a P.I.T.A. GotJ, I was an easy target today, sitting at work with nothing to do and I get VERY irritable when I have 0 problems to solve... | ||
| Quintssp |
What was the end fix, i have the exact same problem and the dealer doesn't know whats wrong, as well their diagnostic machine is down and the part they need is back-ordered about 2 more weeks. | ||
| Froggy |
Quintssp, here is a post in another thread
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| Quintssp |
Sorry, been away. Thanks for the post, i'm sure it will help. |
