• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

Stranded (again)- please advise

Your splice looks great! I would try 13.5. It will be higher at higher RPM of course. The VR also has special circuitry to limit voltage if your battery is really low (which it is) so as not to overcharge so that might be what your are seeing. It keeps the charge voltage a certain set amount above the battery voltage. Good work. Cam.
 
Thanks again guys- I can't tell you how helpful you've been.

So I'm still concerned about the cause, of course. Kind of a chicken or the egg thing in that it appears the fraying came first (given what I first saw: the rubbed through black wrap and frayed wires- which then caused shorting/melting....possible?) OR something caused the frying and it melted/fused then opened up. I'd sure love to know- and please let me know if the fraying shorting would have caused heat/melting.

Either way I know more testing is in order- will do the VR test in the manual, and whatever else may apply. Got the battery charging tonight. Hey- does that second additional ground (to the engine ground) have to be #10? I'll grab some if that's best. I did use sandpaper on the ground lead/loop and also sanded on the mounting base of the VR (where it was orinally mounted.) I'll also get some of that heat grease.

The routing of the wires/connector (to the VR) leaves a lot to be desired. Very tight between the frame and air box edge...can't see any obvious way to open that up, yet. Tight throughout down there. Also, given the tight spot, the wires coming out of the connector at the VR have to do an immediate double back (like right where they go into the connector) and are pinched against the frame. Seems a little nuts...not trusting it and not seeing any way to free that up (but will study it more closely.) Makes me nervous...don't want another incident at this location because, as you've seen, I've little to nothing to work with at the connector end if it does.

Still, all in all a better day/outcome than having fried the wiring harness or ECU. :)
 
10g on the ground wire is what I used on the other bike I own. I think 12 would be ok but 10 is better. So far you are doing great, with good work and rewards. I would tend to think that the rub, fray, melt down is the events order.
 
I'm with Palmer on that rub, fray, melt thing. From what I have seen on my bike the wire routing isn't very good. The idea of the large wire #10 is less resistance. A car stereo install shop might sell it by the foot. Cam
 
Sounds good- I'll definitely go with #10. Want to get this as right as possible from the get go.
 
This happened to me too on my sm630. I parked it running fine. A couple days later when i pushed the start button it would try but very weakly. Searching for a problem I found that the wiring to the right side of the battery had somehow slipped underneath the battery and been worn through. I fixed up the harness put it all back together and has been running great ever since.


I also blew a fuse during this. I didn't disconnect the battery and at some point a wire touched either another wire or the frame. Some pretty sparks, ten minutes of frustration and a new fuse later the bike started fine. It was a long ten minutes.
 

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Great to hear you got it worked out quickly. I wish mine would have been more of a sudden failure as then I wouldn't have had quite as much of a length of the wires fried/frayed (and also wouldn't have gotten stranded, nor added wear on a new battery, etc.....but hey it sure beats what I thought I was looking at.) As it is now I have patches very close to the connector and those make it harder to route - my melting made it up close to the connector (in fact two of the wires had all insulation burned off right up to an into the connector, so I covered those in heat shrink tubing and over that some wraps of electrical tape.) You can bet I'll be looking very carefully at how I may route this, although in hindsight I should have added just a little more length to my patch so that I'd have other options. Oh well, not un-doing it now. :)
 
Hey- does anyone know how hot the VR should feel immediately following riding? The connector seems air temp to maybe mildly warm, but fine. If I press my hand against the VR it's pretty warm- almost hot, but not so much that I can't touch it. Now getting 14.25 feeding back to battery. Thanks!
 
The VRs run HOT! Thats why they have cooling fins and usually use the frame as a heat sink. If you can touch it then is running normal to cool. Just think how hot is gets when it melts the plastic connector. Glad everything has worked out. Cam.
 
KXcam22 said:
The VRs run HOT! Thats why they have cooling fins and usually use the frame as a heat sink. If you can touch it then is running normal to cool. Just think how hot is gets when it melts the plastic connector. Glad everything has worked out. Cam.
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Thanks for the reassurance Cam. So far so good. Not fully trusting it, yet, as those wires got fried right on down to the connector and the angle/tight stuffing of it all is tight when mounted up. Also, because of the tight routing, I'm concerned about a replay of the fray/fry- will be keeping a close eye on it and did take your advice and put in place the secondary #10 ground to the engine ground (plus copious heat paste!) Anyway, had a good/fun day of it...so far so good.

Saw how you're helping the guy with the 610 w/ electrical issues- this forum is lucky to have you. Thanks again!
 
Wire melting is possible due to the fray- if the wire begins to fray there is less wire to transmit the amp load (not sure what it would be in this case) and more resistance. I usually think of it like this... electricity is current. Current is movement. Most movement causes friction, and friction causes heat. When too much electricity is forced to move through too little wire, there is more current than the wire is rated for, and therefore more, and often times, too much heat- and now.. melted wires!
 
Hello. I have a similar issue with the voltage regulator. Is anyone still on this thread? If so, let me know. Thanks.
 
Sooter said:
Hello. I have a similar issue with the voltage regulator. Is anyone still on this thread? If so, let me know. Thanks.
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Hey fella. Sorry to hear you're having these issues. Mine was resolved w/ the re-splicing/patch-up...haven't had issues since (though that's not to say I fully trust it. :)

I'm not strong on electrical issues at all, but DynoBob's advice in the other thread where you posted seems solid. He (and this gang in general) are fantastic...so I'd suggest trying the suggestions, posting up results, and then bird-dogging it along that way. Please keep us posted as to what you learn and good luck!
 
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