Repair Saga

A little while ago I started having some motorcycle problems. I was rolling home in stop-and-go traffic when my headlight dimmed and started to tremble some. I noticed the turn signals were blinking rapidly but weakly and the whole bike was sluggish, barely being able to get out of second gear, and dumping more gas just made it backfire, so uncombusted gas was making it out into the exhaust. It definitely wasn't safe on the road. I limped along to a parking lot and it seemed to fix itself. It seemed like an intermittent electrical connection was causing weak spark, so I figured I'd check it out further once i made it back home near my tools. I took side streets and the behavior came back, but I made it home.

Being busy with work and projects and the greatest piece of media I have ever been involved with, I decided to leave the motorcycle on the street and get to it on the weekend. So I spent Sunday fostering a certain amount of masculine energy, pulling the thing apart, stashing the gas tank and seat somewhere for a few hours, disconnecting and reconnecting every multipin connector on the entire bike and putting dielectric grease on damn near every one of them. Hand in hand with that was getting dirty, scowling and cursing. I even bummed a cigarette and kept it dangling from my lips (unlit) just to complete the picture. There was one connection that I had an extra hard time getting apart, and after a lot of prying and more cursing, I figured that since it was connected to the main fuse box, if there was any problem in there, I'd have complete electrical failure and not on-again off-again weak spark. I decided to leave that one alone and get on with my life. I reassembled the bike, took a trip to the grocery store and discovered that I still had the problem. Then, when I turned the bike off and tried to turn it on again, I had no power at all. No headlight. Nothing. I juggled a bunch of connectors but nothing helped, and while I was sitting there thinking about what the problem could possibly be, not touching anything, the lights came back on again. What?

At this point I figured that the problem was most likely the battery and decided to deal with it the next day. It had been low on water (me being lazy) and had gone without a reconditioning in a long time (me being lazy), so I figured it was time to replace it. I walked down to Autozone and traded the old one in, had them put the acid in the new one for me and went home (the kid there failed to take the pressure release cap off before adding the acid, so when I discovered this and removed it, I managed to get a spray of battery acid on my arm and face, which was awesome). After a long charge, I put the battery back in the bike and started it up. It started fine, but I didn't have time to drive it to check for the problem, so I put it off another day.

I then took a trip to the grocery store (I kept using the grocery store as my destination on these test drives because it's uphill, so I figured it would be easier to push and/or coast the bike back downhill if the thing completely failed on me). The problem was back. This time, though, I had a multimeter with me and when I tested the voltage of the battery in this ailing system, it was...13 volts, totally fine. Maybe a little off, but totally fine. At this point I figured that it was possibly a problem with the charging system, the regulator, or something i didn't understand. In any of those cases, while my background in electrical engineering made me conscious of the theory and the concepts, I thought it might be better to turn it over to a technician who actually had some training in the specifics of motorcycle electronics and common failures. The disconnect between engineers and technicians is broad and lamentable in many fields, but I think this is particularly true in electronics.

So I decided to take it to the shop. But I didn't have time right away, and besides, I was feeling bad about my lack of ability and still holding out hope that something in the Haynes manual would point me in the right direction so I could fix it myself. I didn't mind being forced to ride my bike to work and the track for a while. God knows I can use the exercise.

Today I had the day off so I finally decided to take the thing down there, and guess what? The bike started acting up and when I pulled it over, it wouldn't start up again and then died completely. No power at all. So I'm between my home and the shop and I figure oh, what the hell. I pull off the sidecover and start working really hard at getting that one multipin connector apart and opening the fuse box.

What I found was this: the connector had some corrosion on it, but probably not enough to keep current from flowing, and the fuse had a tiny bit of corrosion around a tiny fissure in the middle. I believe this crack was so small that the pieces of metal were still touching, so the fuse would still pass current, for the most part, but small vibrations or changes in temperature would cause the two ends to reseat, sometimes causing non-ohmic (nonlinear) contact and thus poor current flow, and sometimes no connection at all. Honda gives you a spare in that little box, so I walked home, grabbed a screwdriver and replaced it. It seems to be running fine now, though if there was some underlying problem that caused the fuse failure in the first place (other than the rain we'd been having), I'll have to sort that out in the future.

The main lesson here is this: don't let your brain defeat you, Bryan. Don't assume that because you're smart and can think a few layers into everything that you can cut corners. Be thorough, even if you can come up with a rational reason why you can skip a step. All that disconnecting and reconnecting and inspecting was worthless, since the one part that failed got overlooked. It's worth it to cover everything and be sure.