Motorcycle maintenance advice sought

In My Humble Opinion
1

There I was, coming home from work when the freeway turned into a parking lot. Warm day but not terribly hot. I mean traffic was dead. After about half an hour of much idling and moving forward 20 feet at a time, I was sitting there idling, in neutral, when my bike stopped running. Just like I had turned off the key. No funny noises, nothing. I hit the starter and nothing happened.

Naturally, this happens just as traffic starts moving and I’m in the middle of 8 lanes of cars. The freeway and where it splits off into two more, two lane offramps. I have to now push my 650lb bike uphill for 1/4 mile to a thin median strip.

When I finally got some breath back, I hit the starter again, which whirred, and the tach hit about 3000. I hit it again and nothing. Not a sound. I put it in 5th gear and pushed it and the motor turned over. Hit starter again, not a thing. 5 minutes later, it whirred, spinning the tach again. This continued for the next hour or so. Oil level is fine. Temp gauge never got over usual midline. It’s still sitting there and I’m baffled. By the time I left, the temp gauge was down to zero. I’ve never seen anything like this before. What especially sucks is that my bike is perhaps the most unbreakable bike Honda ever made, the PC800.

Does anybody have any idea?

2

If it turns out you hit the kill switch by accident, can we laugh at you? :slight_smile:

I’m assuming you didn’t do that, though. And let’s also assume it’s got enough gas in it (you can pretty much tell my level of tech expertise, huh?). Could it be a fuel injection problem?

Are you saying the starter only worked the FIRST time? No go on subsequent tries?

A battery problem then? The average bike battery will last about 5 to 6 years. How old is yours?

3

The kill switch. Believe me, I beat on it several times thinking I done just that, playing air drums while waiting for traffic to move. Full tank of gas, and I run carbs.

The starter was intermittent. Sometimes it would spin up, other times it wouldn’t do a thing. Motor never once turned over, or even caught slightly.

Battery is a couple years old, but always checks good on the meter each month.

Sorry if I get to babbling or miss words but right now I am still worn the hell out from the push and I’m still trying to hydrate myself. One guy on an Intruder stopped and he was as puzzle as I am about how it just died and what the starter is doing.

4

An intermittent starter. Hmmm. I’d say have the battery’s power checked, and if it’s all right, I’m putting my money on a dead starter engine.

However, that still doesn’t explain why it just died in the middle of traffic.

Johnny! Spiny! Get yer asses in here. :slight_smile:

5

Have you checked the air in the tires lately? :smiley:

I was cruising down the 405 at about 80 mph a few years ago on the Seca. The engine just quit. I coasted over to the right, and surmised the problem. Yamahas, and I assume most or all other bikes, have a switch on the kickstand. If the kickstand is down, the engine is shut off. This is to prevent people from riding off with the kickstand down. One of the wires on the switch broke. Unfortunately I had stopped carrying a pocket knife just days before, because I never found a use for it. For some reason I have an army-surplus P-38 tin opener on my keychain. Why not? It doesn’t take up any space. Although it opens tins well, it’s about a sharp as a dull rock. Still, I was able to strip away some of the insulation on the broken ground wire and was up and running again about five minutes after the engine shut down.

But your problem didn’t shut down the starter. I’m not sure what you mean by “the tach hit about 3000”. I thought the tach wouldn’t register unless the engine is cranking.

First: If the starter is not turning, then there is a fault in the starter circuit. But your starter did whirr, at least at first. So if the starter is turning, then was the crank turning? If not, then the starter is not connecting to the starting gear. Cars have a solenoid, but I don’t know about bikes. I assume they do. So if the starter runs but the crank isn’t turning, then I’d suspect a bad solenoid.

What if your engine is cranking, but it’s not starting? Engines need three things to run: Fuel, air, and a source of ignition.

Fuel. If you have fuel, is it getting to the engine? I was riding the Seca once when it acted as if it was out of fuel. When I opened the tank to check the fuel that I knew was in there, there was a sucking sound and the metal tank actually visibly expanded. There is a rubber grommet on the vent hole on my bike. I was using one of those booted nozzels to refuel and it squashed the grommet, closing it. The fuel was being sucked out of the tank, but not being replaced by air. I un-tweaked the grommet and all was well.

Does the PC have a fuel pump; or is it gravity fed? If it has a pump, a failed pump would make it act as if it was out of fuel. A clogged fuel line will do the same thing.

Air. The engine needs air to mix with the fuel. If your air filter is very dirty, it will choke the engine. You will probably experience degraded performance long before it just quits though.

Ignition. Let’s see… You have an ignition switch that allows the engine to run. Then there is a connection from the battery to the coil, and others from the coil to the spark plugs. If there is a fault in any of those, then the engine will not run. If it’s between the coil and the plugs (i.e., the plug wires are bad), then it’s unlikely that all four will fail at once. If it’s between the battery and the coil, then that would shut it down.

I’m guessing that there is a broken wire (open circuit) between your ignition switch and the starter and/or ignition circuit. Or you might have a loose wire in your kickstand kill switch or (less likely) your handlebar kill switch. Or your ignition switch could be bad. A broken wire or bad ignition switch would cause the starter to intermittently not run. I don’t know how the wiring is, but I guess it’s possible that the starter might turn, but the juice to the engine is shut off. I’d start there.

BTW: I’m not a mechanic, and I really don’t know the first thing about engines. So I might have been feeding you a load of cal.

6

Server error. Did that last post go through? :confused:

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That’s weird. I’ve made two posts, and it didn’t update on the table of contents. Let’s see… A computer needs three things to run…

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It’s all there Johnny:)

See that is what is bugging me about this. A fuel problem wouldn’t stop the starter from cranking the engine. Same with air. An electrical problem with the starter shouldn’t have stopped the motor while running, and if the starter does spin, which it does on and off, why does it not engage the motor?

My schematic shows the tachometer connected to the ignition coils. So if the tachometer is spinning, the coils are firing.

Which begs the question. What will kill the motor while running, then alternately allow the starter to turn without cranking the motor, and the starter not move, all with the engine not seized, with full oil, and apparently decent temperature? I assumed at the time, that it was an overheat and that my gauge might not be accurate, even though it hadn’t gone past what it ever has before.

I thought of the sidestand kill switch as well, and spent a lot of time playing with it, until I realized that the motor died while I was in neutral. The sidestand kill isn’t energized while in neutral. Either way, It shouldn’t allow the starter to spin without engaging the engine.

The more I think about it all, and the more I look at the schematics, the less sense this makes, which is getting me worried. This has all the makings of a terrible problem, (which begs the question of why, at 20K miles) or a very simple one that is going to have me kicking myself.

Immediate concern is how the hell do I get it home/to the shop? It is near 30 miles away right now, and tomorrow I have to call the shop and offer them an insane amount of cash to go get it, call AAA and see if they deal with bikes (I can’t find my membership stuff… anybody know if they do, offhand?) or rent a U-haul and trailer and try and get it loaded up.

Half of me is hoping that some of our “less than upstanding” citizens in Hazelwood will solve this for me. If there are any lurkers of “less than upstanding” status in the Hazelwood area tuning in, there is a black PC800 on southbound 270 right at the split of the 70 and Rock Rd. offramps.

This really sucks. Mainly because I couldn’t fix it myself. My pride is hurt so I’m gonna have another martini now that I’m hydrated again and cry.

9

AAA doesn’t do bikes, as I found out when I blew my chain. It cost me $100 to hire a wrecker to take the bike to the shop. You might be better off getting a U-Haul and taking it yourself.

Re: the sidestand. IIRC (and it’s been a long time ago) my bike wouldn’t start even in neutral when the wire failed. Still, your starter is turning.

Another thought: What about the computer module? Is it possible that it overheated? If it did, you might need a new one. (The shopman say, “ka-CHING!”)

See, this is the one thing I like about California. We can split lanes legally. My new R1 is liquid-cooled, but sitting on it it gets hotter than the Seca. Without that airflow not only the engine would overheat, but the rider as well! It really is a safety issue. It’s much safer for the rider and for the drivers if there aren’t bikes overheated and being pushed to the side of the road on a busy freeway.

I’m assuming that the air cleaner is clear. You can check your fuel flow just to make sure it’s not clogged. Then the next thing would be to check for spark. It probably doesn’t need to be said, but: Pull off a spark plug wire and insert a bolt into it. Then crank the engine while holding the bolt near the top of the plug to see if it arcs.

I’m not clear on one thing: Is the starter, when it operates, turning the crank?

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AAA does do bikes – but not in all states, and not at the basic membership rates. There is a premium membership category that gets you breakdown service for mortorcycles (and/or RV’s). Unfortunately it’s not available here in NY either.

11

Starter firing, then quitting, then firing again after 5 mins, then quitting ? Sounds like the battery might be drained - it recovers a bit on its own when left alone. Assuming electrical trouble, a hypothesis might be that the relay that feeds power to the battery (I have absolutely no automotive vocab, I’m sorry) might have burned out. Battery gets no power, ignition, fuel pump & fan runs on battery power until it’s drained, engine splutters and dies.

After a short recovery, the battery regains enough juice to crank a little, but not enough to start the bike proper.

Worth checking out, I guess.

12

I love this Internet thingie…

Please understand that I’m only drawing on limited personal experience, here. I am not a mechanic, and I could be talking through my hat.

The word I’m looking for is the Regulator, probably integrated with the Rectifier (sounds like 2 Schwarzenegger movies waiting to happen, doesn’t it ?) in the creatively named Rectifier-Regulator (RR) unit. Check this out…

A new RR will probably set you back about $150-200 (this site will sell you one for $154.50). RRs for sale The bad news, of course, is that it might have burned out due to a Deeper Problem in the electrical system…

Anyhoo, it’s a guess. I’ve had the same symptoms occur on one of my old bikes.

13

My old Hondas never had that kill on the side stand device (not that I ever needed it, no, not me). But I did have a starter solenoid go bad on my old VF750C Magna. Battery cable went from post to the solenoid, then the other solenoid post cable went out to the starter. (I call it a solenoid anyway.)

Through the miracle of google, perhaps this part died? The Stator?

http://www.electrexusa.com/ISSUES_STREET/ISS_HON_PC800_PCFC_COAST.html

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I suggest reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig :slight_smile:

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…Which doesn’t have much to do with Zen, and even less about maintaining motorcycles! :wink: (But it’s still a good book to read.)

16

US standardised bikes have features we in the UK don’t get (thank goodness)

Things like the headlight being hardwired on for instance.

I believe there are a couple of switches you might try to bypass for diagnostic purposes.

The sidestand switch as already mentioned, but there might be one for the clutch.
If the clutch is held in, you can start the bike with the bike in gear.
This might be worth looking at.You should be able to link across it easily enough.
I would also consider linking out the kill switch just to prove it out one way or the other.
Same with the sidestand switch.

Link out each switch in turn and attempt to start.

Make sure your battery is fully charged, and that your plugs are not fouled up.
Next you need to establish wether you are getting a good spark, turn off the fuel, pull out one of your plug leads, fix a piece of wire into the electrode end of the lead, and whilst holding the insulated part of the lead, hold it so the wire you just attatched is very close to the engine casing, (not somewhwere that might be cosmetically noticeable though).
Turn the engine over and check for a good fat spark.

Once you have established wether or not you have a spark, you can then move on.

If you have a spark it is likely something to do with your fuelling, if you do not have a good spark then you have an electrical problem.

So report back, we await your reply!

Oh and as for the starter quitting, these things are designed to run for a very short time and they can get hot, yours might have a thermal cut out.

17

I just dropped the bike off for routine maintenance. (Bloody! It’s too hot to be out walking!) I mentioned the PC problem to the mechanic, and the first thing he thought was “Sounds like an ignition problem. Could be the computer.”

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AAA here does do bikes, if you have the premium membership, which I don’t. As it would take a week to activate, that was out. U-Haul was out too as I’m stuck at home all weekend. So I called the shop to see if they could recommend someone. First thing the guy says is “Why? Do you have a PC800 you need towed”? He passed it coming in to work this morning. Funny guy. I told him what had happened and he said that it was probably the charging system. Either the regulator or the stator. Lose one of those, and you are running on battery only until you just stop. Battery has enough juice to spin the starter, but not enough to kick it into the engine. Good job Spiny! The first year the PC was made, it had a nasty habit of spitting out stators as fast as they were installed, so the way my luck runs, I got the one bad stator left over from those days that was in the assembly bin.

It took me 3 hours to finally get a guy to go tow it to the shop. They can’t touch it until I sign a work order which will be on Monday, and they are already under a two week backlog, but will try to squeeze the troubleshooting in as quick as they can. This sucks. Two weeks without my bike is going to be like 2 days without beer! I’m really hoping that it isn’t the stator, because the part alone costs about 3 bills, and from the looks of it, a bastard to change. Here’s hoping for cheap and easy, like a bad wire!

And my shoulders and back are KILLING me today. I’m considering going back to little bikes right now so that if I ever have to push one again, I won’t hurt myself! By the way, when you finish pushing a big bike uphill, and lay down next to it on the shoulder to catch your breath, it causes a bit of excitement. People tend to get annoyed when they see that you aren’t dead, but just wishing that you were:)

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On the other hand, a new computer costs about six bills.

Good luck. I hope it’s something simple and inexpensive!

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Damn, the Stator on the Magna was so easy to change it was criminal. I don’t recall the cost, but it wasn’t that much. Good luck, sorry about the temporary loss.