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Betsy's first breakdown

2K views 23 replies 10 participants last post by  AliceNicho 
#1 ·
Betsy has been having some intermittent fuel pressure/pump issues and then today she decided to take it one step further. I pulled out onto the Bruce and lost all power, didn't even have any lights. She did not want to turn over and as I rolled across the 4 lanes on a downward angle I look over my shoulder and here comes a car travelling at least 100km/hr (posted speed limit). Just when I was preparing to say a hail Mary power returned and on the second push of the start button she came to life, albeit slightly reluctantly and I managed to avoid becoming roadkill.
As I trundled along with my partner/mechanic in my ear, he asked if my brake light was working? How the hell was I supposed to know! I travelled almost 20km and stopped for fuel. As it was dark I had tried checking my brake lights at the traffic lights and had been noticing that vehicles following me were rather close as I was braking. At the pump I checked my brakes first and well shit, neither the front nor rear were giving me lights. That coupled with the earlier incident and the prospect of riding a further 50km in the dark and rain with no brake lights and (in the words of my mechanic) a catastrophic electrical failure I decided it was time to utilise my roadside assistance and get a tow truck home. We finally made it home safely and Betsy will go under the microscope to determine the issue.

PS if anyone has had anything similar please share the information below.
 
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#8 ·
Definitely do a diagnostic on your battery (load test) and your stator output.

These symptoms definitely suggest an overall power failure (battery dead/marginal) and this may be due to a failing or weak stator which are known to fail. We had a similar failure on our F800ST and it materialized only when we had additional demands on the battery/stator (lights, heated grips..etc.). The stator experienced a slow death but the symptom was a catastrophic and sudden failure (battery finally gave up).

What year is your 800S/ST?
 
#9 ·
Definitely do a diagnostic on your battery (load test) and your stator output.
I haven't had a battery or stator failure on my '13' GT (yet ?). But have read enough about them on here to fit a voltmeter (incorporated with a USB outlet). Now I will know as soon as the charging system stops performing. There are LED kits available that show green, amber, red which might catch your eye a bit quicker. A bike will run quite some time on just the battery (assuming it is not the problem), before finally coming to a halt.

Ian
 
#23 ·
In case you didn't know, these older (07-10) models have a rotor design that does not allow much oil through to cool the stator. This combined with the old school shunt style regulator rectifier that they came with leads to lots of stators being burned out. My 08' is now on its 5th stator! This last time I changed the rotor to the newer style and changed the R/R to a shindengen.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk
 
#24 ·
In case you didn't know, these older (07-10) models have a rotor design that does not allow much oil through to cool the stator. This combined with the old school shunt style regulator rectifier that they came with leads to lots of stators being burned out. My 08' is now on its 5th stator! This last time I changed the rotor to the newer style and changed the R/R to a shindengen.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk
Well I am still waiting on my Haynes workshop manual as well (bloody Covid messing with the mail). I'll bring that up to the mechanic partner. May be that we change both and avoid this happening again. I know he plans on using a Honda regulator rectifier when he replaces it as "no one has made anything better in the past 30yrs". Thanks for the heads up!
 
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