GOing to the Brown couty rally thursday (290 miles for me), and I was about 3/4th the way there and bike started running bad. At higher speed was a bit of hesitation and under acceleration was worse, power would not completly die (like happens when fuel starved) but was like the power would go to half and then back real quick and real abrupt, chattering some times.
I concidered turning around and head north back toward home so when if completly quit I would maybe be a little closer to home. But it wasnt getting any worse, so I kept going south.
Made it to Bedford, but didnt say anything about the problem. I dont really know why I didnt say much. THere are all these guys there that are quite knolodgeable and helpfull friendly. But I didnt want to have to discuss it. I was pondering my options.
Friday morning I did tell Norm and some others that I would not be leading a group.
I carry some tools and multimeter. I asked to borrow a spark plug wrence from Steve.
Waited untill most folks left for the day. THen I took off the fairing lowers and removed the seat and the tank.
Greg GBW was there and hepled me hold the meter leads and we measured resitance from cap 1 to cap 4, and the meter reading was infinite most of the time but might also jump all over and going to zero and going to infinite, so Hey, I thought I was on the right track of broadly locating the problem, since I was not getting the reading I was expecting. But geepers, could it really be the first thing I suspected and checked? CAn I reall y be that good, that I properly dignosed the problem just from the basic symptioms....?
So to verify things, and to troubleshoot things to furter narrow down the problem further, I took off the caps, and each cap meaured right at about 5k, good, and from wire to wire was just under 20k, good. So that both seemed good but was not consitent with my reading from cap to cap. So I looked and pondered some more and noticed that I had stuck the meter probe well up into the wire, but right at the end of the wire was only like one thin strand of wire and it looked all discolored. So I trimed back each wire about 1/4 or 3/8 inch to where there was more strands and looked better. Put on the caps, and measured again expecting to see better reading.... but nope, meter jumping all over, showing numbers then 0 and then infinite then numbers bouncing around and so on. So I pulled off the caps again, to inspect things, and put back on, and measured again, nope.... still suspect readings on meter.
By this time Dale Dogma was around, lending a hand with meter leads. THe meter did go blank on one occassion, so we though maybe batrtery going weak.
I also though that maybe the meter did okay reading the resistance of the resistor in the cap, and did okay reading the resistance of the coil of wire, but the coil of wire is really an inductor that can build up a magnetic field. And maybe for some reason the meter has a problem when the caps are on because then the circuit is then resistor and inductor... but that didt really make scence either. Dale and I are discussing the physics of this phenomia.... some others looked at us like we were some weirdos or something.
Was not till this morning, 5 days later, it occured to me: I had the meter on the 20K scale (so up to 19.99K) and the caps plus the wires plus the coil is about 30k ... doah. That is what was going on with my meter, I was overranging the meter. TO measure something that is suppose to be about 30K the 20k scale is not going to do it. Next scale would be the 200K (up to 199.9k) .... doah....
I concidered turning around and head north back toward home so when if completly quit I would maybe be a little closer to home. But it wasnt getting any worse, so I kept going south.
Made it to Bedford, but didnt say anything about the problem. I dont really know why I didnt say much. THere are all these guys there that are quite knolodgeable and helpfull friendly. But I didnt want to have to discuss it. I was pondering my options.
Friday morning I did tell Norm and some others that I would not be leading a group.
I carry some tools and multimeter. I asked to borrow a spark plug wrence from Steve.
Waited untill most folks left for the day. THen I took off the fairing lowers and removed the seat and the tank.
Greg GBW was there and hepled me hold the meter leads and we measured resitance from cap 1 to cap 4, and the meter reading was infinite most of the time but might also jump all over and going to zero and going to infinite, so Hey, I thought I was on the right track of broadly locating the problem, since I was not getting the reading I was expecting. But geepers, could it really be the first thing I suspected and checked? CAn I reall y be that good, that I properly dignosed the problem just from the basic symptioms....?
So to verify things, and to troubleshoot things to furter narrow down the problem further, I took off the caps, and each cap meaured right at about 5k, good, and from wire to wire was just under 20k, good. So that both seemed good but was not consitent with my reading from cap to cap. So I looked and pondered some more and noticed that I had stuck the meter probe well up into the wire, but right at the end of the wire was only like one thin strand of wire and it looked all discolored. So I trimed back each wire about 1/4 or 3/8 inch to where there was more strands and looked better. Put on the caps, and measured again expecting to see better reading.... but nope, meter jumping all over, showing numbers then 0 and then infinite then numbers bouncing around and so on. So I pulled off the caps again, to inspect things, and put back on, and measured again, nope.... still suspect readings on meter.
By this time Dale Dogma was around, lending a hand with meter leads. THe meter did go blank on one occassion, so we though maybe batrtery going weak.
I also though that maybe the meter did okay reading the resistance of the resistor in the cap, and did okay reading the resistance of the coil of wire, but the coil of wire is really an inductor that can build up a magnetic field. And maybe for some reason the meter has a problem when the caps are on because then the circuit is then resistor and inductor... but that didt really make scence either. Dale and I are discussing the physics of this phenomia.... some others looked at us like we were some weirdos or something.
Was not till this morning, 5 days later, it occured to me: I had the meter on the 20K scale (so up to 19.99K) and the caps plus the wires plus the coil is about 30k ... doah. That is what was going on with my meter, I was overranging the meter. TO measure something that is suppose to be about 30K the 20k scale is not going to do it. Next scale would be the 200K (up to 199.9k) .... doah....
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