| Author | Message | ||
     Hughlysses |
Well, it finally happened to me today. I decided to take the Uly to work today for the first time in a while. This morning it was ~70 degrees and extremely comfortable, but the weather man was calling for mid-90's this afternoon. About 15 miles of my commute is on I-26 in Charleston and N. Charleston, SC, and it's a traffic SNAFU about 9 days out of 10 during rush hour. So, I decide to take off work an hour early (2:30 for me) to hopefully beat the inevitable snarl-up. No such luck. After I left work, the first 5 or so miles was a breeze, until approaching the first major intersection, traffic comes to a stop. For the next 45 minutes and 5 or so miles, it was crawling stop-and-go and I'm sure the temperature on the road was 100 deg. F if not higher. The fan didn't even kick on for the first 15 minutes or so, so I wasn't too worried about overheating. OK, after another 20 minutes of this, I'm starting to get a little worried, so I'm being careful to leave extra space in front of me to hopefully avoid ingesting the car in front of me's exhaust and let a little air flow around the motor. I'm in the fast lane and as traffic proceeds the road narrows so that there's only a 2 foot wide space to the left of me with a rumble strip and a concrete divider. We're about a mile away from the last major intersection leaving N Charleston which is generally the point where traffic clears up, even in the event of a monumental CF like today's, so I figure I'll be clear in another 15 minutes or so. With no warning, the bike dies. CRAP! I hit the starter, and it tries to fire, but it won't run. I quickly jump off and push the bike onto that rumble strip. I give it a minute, and try it again. Same thing, it tries to fire up, but soon dies. OK, wait longer. Try again after 5 minutes, it fires up and keeps running (badly), I jump on, flip up the kickstand, snick it into gear, and pull out into traffic. Bike won't rev past about 3000, goes for about 20 seconds and dies again. AGGGHHH!!! Back onto the rumble strip. There's 3 lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic between me and the shoulder of the road. I'm trying to figure if I could snake the bike through pushing it, but I'm not that brave. I try to crank it a couple more times to no avail. I notice the engine is getting very slow to turn over which has me worried since I haven't cranked it THAT much. At this point, I figure the bike is toast. The noise level is high enough with traffic on the opposite side of the divider, I know there's no way I can hear to make a phone call, so I text my wife and ask her to dial *HP to summon the highway patrol. She calls and they say they'll send someone out. By now, traffic is starting to clear and within 5 minutes, cars are whizzing by at 60+ MPH in the lane RIGHT next to me while I lean up against the divider. Crap- this is NOT good. I probably haven't tried to crank the bike for the last 15 minutes, so I decide, WTF, I'll try one more time. Damn if it doesn't fire up! OK, helmet back on, gloves on, kickstand up, drop it in first. NOW what do I do? I have a barely 2 foot "lane" in front of me with a rumble strip and almost no gaps in traffic to my right. I sit there idling for about 2 minutes and finally gun it when I see a gap and ease over into traffic. Bike doesn't feel quite right, but it's running, so I work my way over to the far right lane in case it dies again. As I proceed, the engine seems to clear up so I pass up the first exit and keep heading towards home. Bike is soon running normally and I continue another 5 miles up to my exit and get home without incident. So my "get off of work early come home and chill" Friday turned into a "lets roast ourselves in traffic and then see how close we can come to getting squashed like a bug on the interstate" Friday. I'm glad to be home. I'm pretty puzzled to exactly what happened to the bike, but I'm sure it was heat-related. I guess it's possible it went into skip spark mode while I was stuck in traffic without me noticing, but I'm pretty sure it didn't. I was sort of depending on that as a warning that the bike was getting REALLY hot. The low fuel light came on about 7 miles after I got it running again, so the fuel was low but not VERY low, and I obviously didn't blow a fuel pump fuse. I did notice the exhaust smelled very rich when the bike was barely running on my first couple of start attempts. Maybe the frame got hot enough so that the fuel was boiling in the frame and/or fuel injection lines, which caused it to die? I also noticed when I did get it running, my voltage indicator stayed red for a good 20 seconds or so, and then only went to yellow, even with the engine turning ~4000 RPM. It did finally go to green after a couple of minutes and was fine for the rest of the trip home, even when the engine dropped to idle at a couple of stop lights. Maybe the battery was just that low by the time I got it cranked. So, that's my adventure for Friday afternoon. I hope I don't repeat that any time soon.  | ||
| Reepicheep |
Ugh! Glad you are OK. I wonder if fuel pumps can just sieze temporarily when overheated. That would explain why they blow fuses (seize first, blow later). Or boiling fuel. Note to self, if in traffic jam in heat anyway, stop and top off fuel tank to make more fuel that would have to boil. | ||
| Mark_weiss |
Sounds kind of like boiling fuel. Since the Uly does not have a looped fuel rail, once a bubble forms in the pressure side of the system it is kind of hard to straighten things out. Skip-spark is pretty distinctive. The first time I encountered skip-spark I thought that I had broken a motor mount. | ||
| Sagehawk |
Just like cold start enrichment, when bike gets to certain temp heat wise, the ecm will richened up the fuel a fair amount. Timing might be changed as well. I can't get to those screens in version 2 spy due to windows 10 and some dumpy drivers to share with you. A fellow at work is going over that issue now. You should have had a blinking cel just before engine dying though. | ||
| Hughlysses |
If the CEL was blinking before it died, it didn't last long at all because I'm pretty good about checking the panel and I never saw it. I've had the bike in some pretty hot similar situations before, certainly times when the ambient was a few degrees hotter, and I've never had an issue. I'll do my best to avoid getting in that situation again. The real kicker is that as I was exiting the parking lot at work I had a choice of 2 routes and I STARTED to go the other way. That route is about 10 miles of city streets followed by 15 miles of a two lane, shady back road. Since I was leaving work at 2:30, I decided to avoid that route as I'd have to pass a high school and elementary school which would have been getting out about the time I'd be riding by. That would have been a far preferable route! | ||
| Teeps |
I second Mark's boiling fuel theory. Specially since you said the low fuel light came on. One word: Filtering... | ||
| Hughlysses |
I second Mark's boiling fuel theory. Specially since you said the low fuel light came on. I tend to think that as well. The low fuel light came on probably ~1 or 2 miles after I got the bike running and up to speed again. High outside temp, low fuel, extended idling, and crawling traffic is not a good combination. Of course, after all this, there was not the slightest sign of the cause of this traffic SNAFU by the time I got there. | ||
| Falloutnl |
Luckily filtering is legal in most of the EU. Would hate to have to sit my Buells in a sweltering traffic jam. Glad it seems to be ok now, and that you weren't squashed obviously. | ||
| Natexlh1000 |
I sit in traffic until my bike starts to run funny/I start to feel faint. Then I just get out of there via whatever means I can. Self-preservation is more important than illogical laws. Think about this: if everyone else was on a bike instead of a three ton air-conditioned coffin, would you have even been in a traffic jam? | ||
| Mark_weiss |
I live near Phoenix. The Land of Boiling Fuel. My first fuel injected bike was a BMW K75. BMW retrofitted the bikes with a pretty substantial under-tank insulating blanket to quell fuel temperatures. A more effective add on was to splice into the, low pressure, fuel return line and add a small oil or steering cooler to drop fuel temperature. Of course, you have to have a return line to be able to make this modification. I added heat tile to the inner faces of my frame/tank of my Uly. That made a big difference. | ||
| Hughlysses |
I insulated the inner surfaces of my frame with Thermotec, but apparently that wasn't sufficient . | ||
| Hughlysses |
I found a pic of where I was stuck Friday using street view on google maps. You can see a Ford SUV approaching the camera in the far lane; I was in the space between that SUV and the concrete divider.  There is JUST enough room for the motorcycle to stand on the kickstand there. It was safe enough with traffic crawling by at walking speed, but with traffic zipping by at 60 MPH+, not so much! | ||
| Reepicheep |
One of my biggest fears is being stranded in a spot like that. Yikes. It almost happened to me when my crank position sensor was dying. I managed to rip from the left lane across three lanes of traffic with a dead engine while not dying. Not something I want to do often. Probably even more dangerous in a car, it's a wonder there isn't more carnage as a result of breakdowns in the left lane on a road with no left shoulder. | ||
| Mark_weiss |
Even with a lane-wide left shoulder, it is a scary spot. A year or so ago I came across a guy off to the left with a flat tire. He wanted to try to push the bike farther along to an opening to a wide median (the bike was a Kaw. Concours). I said no, just get on with me and we'll call for a tow truck. | ||
| Smorris |
I added heat tile to the inner faces of my frame/tank of my Uly. That made a big difference. mark weiss what is this? how does it function? how has it worked for you? | ||
| Mark_weiss |
I don't recall the brand name. It is an adhesive backed, foil faced, insulating material is probably some sort of silica fiber matting. There's not much space between the heads and the frame so the barrier needs to be thin. It was necessary to rotate the engine to access all of the inner faces of the frame. I added the radiant barrier about 50k ago and have found that in the more weather exposed areas (rear, bottom) the adhesive is giving up and the material is starting to peel away. The most notable difference is that it takes longer for the frame to get unreasonably hot. The frame still heat soaks, it just takes longer. Considering that most of my commuting involves riding 30 minutes or less, adding the heat barrier was a worthwhile endeavor. | ||
| Hughlysses |
Smorris- Here's the stuff, made by a company called Thermotec: http://www.thermotec.com/products/13500-adhesive-backed-heat-barrier.html You can get it from places like Summit Racing as well as some local auto parts stores. EBR using some really high tech stuff on their bikes called "Aerogel". It's supposedly nearly a perfect insulator. I can't find a commercial listing for it, but you may be able to buy it as a replacement part from EBR.  | ||
| Falloutnl |
Man, the location on that pic looks dicey. | ||
| Medi |
Thanks for sharing the story, sounds very familiar... almost got stuck in Lincoln tunnel once, with fellow lady biker blocking off bumper to bumper traffic for me so I could run the bike downhill to start it, getting cursed out in the process from ahole NJ commuters, waiting 30 minutes for a tow truck that never showed up and then walking it to the tunnel garage. Was suppose to take 1 hour and turned into 3 with the bike finally getting towed after 4 jump starts. | ||
| Sprintex |
Just bought some Thermotech, very thin s, but I held it over a burner on hi on my stove, couldn't feel the heat, my insulated gloved hand holding got hot after a couple minutes. | ||
| Reepicheep |
I love the location of that picture. It screams "send an engineer out to the production line and snap a picture of the frame". Because, we actually use aerogel on our current frames. Which is awesome. Solve the problem first, brag later. I have some heavy foil laminate scrap that my Dad grabbed from some dumpster when he was an engineer for a Honda parts supplier. He said it was a good heat shield, and I put it on several Buells now, it works great and has stuck for many tens of thousands of miles. It's not aerogel cool though. (Am I the only one that has looked for aerogel samples to buy on Ebay just to play with?) | ||
| Dark_side |
I spent 4.5 years living in Goose Creek. Hated 26 with a passion. Glad you're fine. | ||
| Hughlysses |
Thanks, William. You can't imagine how much worse it's gotten in the last 5 years. | ||
| Chopperbob |
Hi Hugh, Glad you made it off the center divider, safely. I used to get paid to stand (briefly) in those center dividers. Been there many times helping stranded motorists on SoCal freeways. Doesn't matter if you having blinking blue lights on your motorcycle, it is still nerve wracking to be in that area! | ||
| Teeps |
Chopperbob Posted on Tuesday, September 27, 2016 - I used to get paid to stand (briefly) in those center dividers. Been there many times helping stranded motorists on SoCal freeways. Doesn't matter if you having blinking blue lights on your motorcycle, it is still nerve wracking to be in that area! Copy that Chopperbob, Back in the '70's a Cal Trans worker lost his life, early one morning, on the 91, while working the sweeper train. The boss drove by the accident that morning. Only to realize, days later, it was our customer that was killed. His mother called the shop asking if we would pick his motorcycle up from work; she did not want to see it... | ||
| Vman858 |
Had this happen once on Lower Wacker Dr in downtown Chicago on a Saturday night. Finally started running again but lots of sputtering. I actually think it was one of the relays intermittently making and breaking contact. I keep a spare on hand always. Glad you got out of there safely. | ||
| Smorris |
mark & Hugh, thanks for the info and links. i know nothing about the EBR bikes, do they use the same frame as the XB's, so that the pre-cut pieces will work on the XB frame? Reepicheap, what did you use for your adhesive? | ||
| Hughlysses |
i know nothing about the EBR bikes, do they use the same frame as the XB's, so that the pre-cut pieces will work on the XB frame? It's definitely not the same frame, but they are similar. I'll bet they can be made to work. | ||
| Reepicheep |
It already had adhesive on it. | ||
| Surfsofa |
Ugh. We can only hope that the common sense of California (those words are not often spoken) over allowing lane splitting filters through to the rest of the country. |
