Good Morning,

I have a bit of an odd situation and am looking for some help/advice.
I rode to work this morning and while on the ride to work I noticed my bike making an odd sound. Nothing alarming but definitely not a sound it normally makes.  In fact...now that this is all over I can recall it only doing it once before only it ended much better the first time.  When I got to work and I turned off my bike it kept turning over.  My key was out of the ignition and my kill switch was in the on position and yet...my bike kept turning over.  If I put my key back in and turned it to on and turned off the kill switch the bike would start back up on its own.  Without me hitting start or pulling in the clutch.

Very weird.

Unfortunately no one coming into the underground parking had a screwdriver (was going to disconnect the battery) and finally I decided that I had to go to a gas station and find out if they had a screw driver.  Now at this point I had tried several things.  Pulling key out, using kill switch, pulling out fuses, disconnected certain wires at the front in an attempt to get it to stop.  I got on my bike and after trying the key one last time I went to put it back in and let the bike start up when it died.  COMPLETELY.

At this moment in time I dont even get any power.  No lights on the triple tree, no head lights...nothing.

I am at a complete loss.

I am planning to go down on my lunch and see if anything has rectified itself but I am not putting any faith in it.  Any ideas as to what might have happened or could be wrong would be helpful.  I suspect the ignition but I have never experienced this before.  On top of that I am worried I won't be able to bump start it in order to get it home.

My brother's truck did this to him one time a couple of years ago.  I think his problem ended up being the starter, but I don't really remember.  Actually, I don't think we actually had to fix anything on his truck.  He had pulled all the plug wires while it was happening, so the only thing we had to do was reattach them and jump start it.  It hadn't happened again since.  Sorry this isn't real helpful.

By the way, your battery is probably dead from turning the starter all that time.  You'll probably need to find someone to jump start you.

Yes this sounds like it could be a complex problem and not one easily solved in the car park. Il wait for some of the big boys to chime in with wiring diagrams because it definatly sounds like an electrical malfunction going on.

Without knowing much about the wiring system my first idea would be to pull all the connectors which could possible get water in them, so all the big box connectors and stuff and check for corrosion on the pins. If some are then that could be your problem - poor weak electrical conduction. Fix this by spraying in some WD40 and just connecting and unconnecting vigorously to wear it off. Once you've check all possible connections without any avail you will have to wait because the problem must be more complex than a simple poor connection somewhere.

Also TOP TIP:  If you can't seem to shut the engine off - as in the engine keeps turning over like it appeared to do. Once the key is off and the kill switch is off there is nothing electrical you can really do unless you choose to disconnect the battery but the easiest way is to just stall the bike. Put front brake on hard, put bike in gear and let the clutch out slowly untill it stalls with a small jerk.

Ok!


So...I have no clue why my bike kept turning over even after I pulled out the key and flip on the kill switch.  Any insight into that would be wonderful.
BUT
On the plus side...I was able to get the bike running again.  Turns out the battery was drained while I was trying to figure out why the bke kept turning over.  Something I should have suspected but when the bike died suddenly (and not slowly like has happened in the past when the battery was low on juice) I started looking for another problem.  As I said before...not even the Oil or Neutral lights would come on.
*shrug*

So there you have it.

It sounds to me like your starter relay is shot.  Noodle through [THIS OLD POST] and see if that makes sense ... in conjunction with this snippet of the [Haynes wiring diagram]:



I guess the other possibility is that you have some weird wiring short going on, where the starter relay is always getting power.  Kind of like a permanent "hot wire" job.... 


EDIT: I guess I could have mentioned how to use that old post.    If you get a low resistance reading in Step 5 (before you even go to step 6), your starter relay is definitely shot.

The thing I would look at, is also check your starter button, it MAY be stuck internally.  it has happened to other bikes for me before.   

as to why you're not getting power,  pull the seat, look at your main fuse, should be a 20A fuse, odds are it blew.    if its a short, remember fuses are designed to blow in the event of such problems to save your (very expensive) wire harness from melting down on you and forcing a total rewiring.

Quote from: bobthebiker on October 30, 2007, 12:15:42 PM
The thing I would look at, is also check your starter button, it MAY be stuck internally.  it has happened to other bikes for me before.

I don't think a stuck switch (ON ITS OWN) would explain the symptom.  When I mentioned a "weird wiring short" I was thinking of something more "direct"... like in the photo below.  If the insulation gets worn off of the right wires, and they get pinched together, all sorts of interesting things can happen....

Your starter runs for 20 mins and your battery is dead. BTW, that IMHO is a good feature, my virago died like that 2 years ago, maybe saved a lot of internals from grinding up inside and turning into an enchilada.
But then again, 10 mins with me droning at 80 clicks and it didn't grind up. Then maybe its not going to ...
Cool.
Srinath.

Idk if i read this wrong but your key was out and the kill switch off and it was still starting up?
theres only one answer to this..... ITS ALIVE!!! 

alright, yeah I totally missed the part about the key being OFF and removed from the ignition.  at that point, I'd be looking for pinched and shorted wires. 

Quote from: bobthebiker on October 30, 2007, 05:24:07 PM
alright, yeah I totally missed the part about the key being OFF and removed from the ignition.  at that point, I'd be looking for pinched and shorted wires. 

Id be looking to put it down, take it to the vet or something, that thing IS alive lol.

Nah im sure its just going to be a wiring prob

I blew quite a few fuses earlier this summer cause of a wire short (exactly like the one in the picture) and have taken steps to minimize such shorts.  That is not to say of course that another could not have manifested. Something to look for this winter while I go over the bike.

This is definitely an odd one.

Thanks for all the advise so far.  Definitely gives me some food for thought and some stuff to look over this winter.