Electronics woes

Hi,

Rolled the Commando out of the garage this morning, all ready to go for a blast. I inserted the key to find no red ignition light illuminated, I checked the obvious fuse connectors etc. and all seemed as it should. I removed the battery and found it was completely flat - something seemed to have drained the power.

A friend who lives near me loaned me a fully charged battery off his Triton. I connected this to the bike and proceeded to start the bike. However, when I took the bike up the road I found the red ignition light was continuously lit. I returned home and cleaned several of the connections such as the Zenier diode. To make things worse; when removing the connections from the rectifier, (that has 5 connectors) one of them cracked the unit.

Does anyone have any ideas as to why the red ignition light remains lit when the bike is running? Could this point towards a faulty alternator?

Cheers,

Neil

Neil said:

Hi,

Rolled the Commando out of the garage this morning, all ready to go for a blast. I inserted the key to find no red ignition light illuminated, I checked the obvious fuse connectors etc. and all seemed as it should. I removed the battery and found it was completely flat - something seemed to have drained the power.

A friend who lives near me loaned me a fully charged battery off his Triton. I connected this to the bike and proceeded to start the bike. However, when I took the bike up the road I found the red ignition light was continuously lit. I returned home and cleaned several of the connections such as the Zenier diode. To make things worse; when removing the connections from the rectifier, (that has 5 connectors) one of them cracked the unit.

Does anyone have any ideas as to why the red ignition light remains lit when the bike is running? Could this point towards a faulty alternator?

Cheers,

Neil

Click to expand...

Red ignition light is assimilator warning light. Means that the circuit is below 12 volts so I would suspect that either your alternator is faulty or more likely has a bad connection. The alternator wires can get cut by rubbing against the rotor in the primary if there is too much slack in there. A bad alternator or bad alternator connection might also explain the flat battery although if it wasn't being charged the last time you rode it, I would have thought you would have seen the warning light coming on then as well. Is this the first time you have seen the red light staying on? Have you worked on your primary drive recently? Another (less likely) possiblity is lack of clearance between rotor and stator. When the rotor heats up it expands a bit and could be rubbing. My warning light came on last year for about a mile before my primary seized up. I didn't have enough clearance between stator and rotor. Expensive lesson for why it is important to have at least 0.0010 inches of clearance!!

Neil said:

Does anyone have any ideas as to why the red ignition light remains lit when the bike is running? Could this point towards a faulty alternator?

Click to expand...

The fact that the battery was dead and the charge light stays on when the engine is running on could indicate that either the rectifier or Zener diode has failed, allowing the battery to discharge when standing and not charge when running. This assumes that the battery is in good condition?

You can do a test by disconnecting the battery negative wire and either connecting an ammeter between the (fully charged) battery terminal and wire, or instead use a low wattage bulb (tail light bulb?).

With ignition and lights 'off' the ammeter should not show any reading, or the bulb should not light or glow. If the ammeter shows a reading or the bulb glows there is current draining from the electrical system. If so, first disconnect the battery wire from the rectifier (should be a brown/blue wire?) if the ammeter goes to zero or light goes completely out then the rectifier is probably faulty. If there is no change then replace the rectifier wire, and disconnect the wire from the Zener diode, if that zeroes the meter or extinguishes the light, then the Zener is probably faulty.

L.A.B. said:

You can do a test by disconnecting the battery negative wire and either connecting an ammeter between the (fully charged) battery terminal and wire, or instead use a low wattage bulb (tail light bulb?).

Click to expand...

Hi,

Have just tried this - with the ignition off the bulb does not light.