Flyinfool

A few years ago I was having that issue only on my puter at work. It was happening on all websites. My home puters were just fine. Once the company upgraded to a faster internet connection and installed new anti virus software, the issue went away. So I do not know if it was some maleware that was on my puter that the new AV software fixed or if it was the faster internet connection that did it.

First thing to check is that the switch is even there. There were some people that had intermittent shutdowns due to a bad tip over switch, since the tip over switch is open when the bike is upright you can just unplug it and the bad switch is "fixed".

:scared: :scared: :scared: WOWZER!!!! That is an ugly one for sure. I can see in one of the pics that there are diodes that are broken in half. These are the diodes that when they go they take other non replaceable components with them. In short, that TCI is toast. I agree that I am very surprised that it was even running on 3 cylinders. Actually these bikes run pretty good on 3 cylinders you can go a long ways and never notice that one is not firing. You may have been down to 1 or 2 cylinders from your description. When you get the new TCI. do not mount it back in the stock location, either put it on top of the air cleaner or inside of the left fairing. Either place will keep it dry and the factory wires are long enough to reach either place. I used Velcro to hold mine in place.

It is common to see corrosion inside of the TCI. There are 8 diodes that get it really bad. They can be replaced for very cheap. No guaranties but it is worth a $2 shot. Normally if you can replace the diodes before they fail you are golden, if it is the diodes that have already failed, then there is no repair of the TCI possible. You may want to check with Dingy on this site. He was selling an after market TCI that is priced better than OEM.

The only reason I can see for the brake light to make any difference with the engine off is that between the 2 brake bulbs pulling 4.5 amps and the EAD pulling another 5 amps, the reduced voltage may be what is having an effect on the audio electronics. along the same lines, when the bike is running and you have even more voltage for the audio system it might be that there is actually less noise to hear and not just that the engine is no longer drowning it out. This is just a theory. If you know someone with a battery tester you can try putting a known pure resistive load on the battery to see if noise goes up with reduced voltage.

I have intentionally laid my 88 on the guards and it stayed there. Granted it was very gently brought to that point, if it had the momentum of a fall I do not know if it would have been able to stop at just the guards. But that is why I asked the question.

Did the bike go all of the way onto its side or was it still resting on the engine guards? I never tested the tip over switch to see how far the bike has to tip before it shuts off the ignition. If was only to the guards then it might not have been far enough to shut off. If the bike went all the way over on its side the engine should have shut off instantly.

If you were designing your own faring you could do it all in the colored carbon fiber and have a really cool look that requires no paint at all.

Half of that would be a 1935cc straight 3 cyl not a V4. It is my personal opinion of something I know little about, that they are saying half of a Vett engine simply because it is a 90° V4 and that is where the similarity ends.

Did you take the cap off of the wire? If you did, did you cut off 1/4 inch of wire to get to a fresh end for reassembly?

I often wonder how they put up with us. And 34 years is a long time. Nice job..

I may be getting older but I refuse to grow up.

It is hard to tell how deep the wire damage goes from the pics. If the wire is cut by more than 10% of the wire diameter then its future is questionable. The thin spot will act like a fuse and that point will get hot until it fails. You effectively have a smaller wire size at the wear point so it will not be able to handle as many amps. undersize wires get hot. If you wish to attempt a repair. I would clean it very thoroughly to remove all traces of oil. sand the area gently, you do not want to expose any new copper, you are just scuffing up the surface a little. Coat the area with some epoxy to seal and insulate everything. But do not expect it to live forever.

Or did you simply relieve an air pocket in the engine that was replenished from the bottle?

Half of a 350 would be 2867cc. At 1650cc it is half of a 200 cubic inch engine. I don't think the vet ever had only 200 CID.

Your close. The stator is a variable voltage variable frequency power source that has both voltage and frequency determined by the rpm of the engine. The Stator is always at it maximum potential. In a stock Venture, first or second gen there is a shunt type regulator. The way that the regulator works is kind of like what you said. The difference being that electricity is not pushed it is drawn. So with the stock regulator when the voltage exceeds it set point (14 volts in this case) it makes a connection to ground and that ground connection will draw as many amps as necessary until the stator can no longer hold the voltage. Whenever you exceed the amp capability of a power source, its voltage will drop proportionally. In this case the voltage drops to ~14VDC on the output. In a stock system; You are correct that the stator is always doing all that it can. It is correct that the regulator is dumping off all of the extra power to ground. Where the difference is, is when the battery is drained way down, and the engine RPM are up, the bike electrical system plus the draw of the battery can exceed the total available output of the stator. In this case the regulator is dumping nothing to ground because the bike plus battery is using it all up, the problem is that if the bike plus battery are asking for more amps than the stator has to give, its voltage will drop. It is this extreme amp load that will cause the windings of the stator to get hot and degrade the insulation on those windings. The stator may not fail right away but you have overheated it and weakened the insulation and you will thus have shortened its life. The stator will fail sooner than if you had never used it at or over its max amp output capability while charging a dead battery. When jump starting, the reason you do not want the car running, and some people get away with having the car running is that the regulator on the bike is going to try to dump as much power to ground as it needs to, to try to maintain its set voltage. IF the cars voltage regulator is set higher than the bikes regulator, the bikes regulator is going to try to pull enough amps to drop the car down to the bikes set point. My car has a 200 amp alternator. The regulator on the bike is rated for around 40 amps. All of the magic blue smoke will come out of the bikes regulator before it can pull down the voltage on my car. If the cars set point happens to be the same or lower than the bikes set point, then there will be no issues with jumping from that car while it is running. This explains why some people have had no problem jumping from a running car. Others got away with it because the two were close enough and were connected for a very short time so things did not have time to overheat. It is just safest to not have the car running to avoid the possibility. You notice that many times I mentioned a stock system, there are after market rectifiers/regulators for our bikes that do not shunt the power to ground and have a completely different way of doing everything. But that is almost a whole nuther post. My fingers are tired now.....

When the bike is cold, start the engine and monitor the temps of the exhaust pipes to see if it is running on 4 cylinders. Be careful it only takes a short time for the pipes to get hot enough to burn you. These bike run amazingly well on 3 cylinders.

each coil will fire once every 360 degrees, or once per revolution.

Then your not getting enough remedy, or getting ice cream to close to home.

sorry...... For my punishment you will have to force me to eat ice creammmmm...........

Whats a suit and tie??? I never had a ring horror story, But then I was religious about not where the ring around mechanical or electrical stuff. I was one of the lucky ones, I figured it out without bad things happening to me or someone else. I do wear a watch, but with a cheap easy to break plastic band, I have had to replace the band at least a half dozen times now.......

I guess I'm chopped liver............ I was working in the basement till 4:30 am this morning. At least I got a lot done. But now I might be to tired to do anything about it. How come 30 years ago I could do these all-nighters and still feel and function fine the next day?????? I hope to be on for a bit tonight, at least until I fall asleep, IF I'm not still chopped liver.......

First I hope you meant volts not amps...... At what RPM are you getting the 13.9 volt reading? How must stuff is turned on while getting the 13.9 volt reading? 13.9 volts is not a bad reading, and is within the normal tolerance. Many meters, especially inexpensive ones, are not accurate enough to measure the difference between 13.9 and 14 Volts.

I hate to be the one to tell you. But you have an incurable disease. Once infected by this bunch there is no cure or escape. The only remedy for the symptoms is repeated MC rides to the farthest away ice cream stand. Preferably with another infected person or 4. This is not a cure, but it does relieve the symptoms foe a short while.

Hehe Thats kind of what I said or at least meant, but I needed a lot more words....... Maybe I've been reading to many of Cowpucs posts......