Here is my story...
Well this afternoon, I took advantage of a couple free hours to install the new passing lights on my ride. I figured while I had the fairing open I would look into the intermittent radio lock ups. Following the 'oh-so-wise' advice from this forum, I disconnected every connection in the fairing, cleaned them with contact cleaner and applied a little Dow Corning #4 dielectric compound. I also looked to see if any of the cables were stretched. Everything looked ok. I really don't expect the problem to be caused by corrosion of the connectors because the bike is only a month old. However, having more than thirty years of electronics experience, I did immediately notice two items which have reared their ugly heads in my past. First is the protective boots around the din connectors and others coming from the radio unit. These boots are pretty tight on the cable but they will slide. At least one of the connectors was not completely seated together because the two sections of the boot were engaged completely before the connector had mated. Pulling the boots back onto the cable a ways allowed the connector to seat correctly. I don't know if it was originally misconnected or not, but when I went back to check my work I found it that way.
The second item was the large ground braid that is connect via the screw on the opposite end of the radio unit. I noticed that the screw is coated with some sort of green coating that is no doubt for anticorrosion purposes. The ring terminal attached to the ground braid is simply compressed between this bolt and the aluminum anodized chassis of the radio. Before I loosened it to check it out, I used an ohm meter to check the radio chassis to ground. There was about 70 ohms of resistance. I have had problems with equipment in the past when anodized aluminum is expected to conduct that way. I placed a star washer on either side of the ring terminal and the resistance dropped below 1 ohm. This could well have been the problem causing the radio lock ups. Time will tell. I will get the opportunity to ride for a while this weekend. I will be interesting to see if this helps.
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