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| Tips & Training Riders new and old can always learn. Share and experience ideas for making motorcycling safer and more enjoyable here! |
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08-19-2006, 06:09 PM
| #1 (permalink) |
| Newbie Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 6
|  The fuse looked good...
Bought a 1983 GS450. My first motorcycle. Started great. Reved great. Accelerated great. Cruising on the highway sucked! At 45mph the bike when intermitantly bog down for a split second. Sometimes it got to the point it would act as if it ran out of gas and I'd pull over to the side of the highway and it would be fine. Start up again and at 45 the bike would act up again. I got lots of great info from other members. Took the carbs off and cleaned them up. There was a lot of crap inside. Thought I had the problem licked. I put the carbs back on. After having some problems getting it restarted I took it out for a ride around town. Mistake number one - If you have a problem at 45mph and up, then you'll need to drive it at 45mph and up to make sure the problem was fixed. Took it out at 3Am to go to work. As one could expect, at 45mph and up it did the same problem. I was able to get it up to 65. I then noticed that everytime a large vehicle would pass and cast an enormous amount of air on me the bike would get worse and almost stall. Not being able to see very well, I reached down to check the wires by the side cover. I grabbed a wire and the bogging down stopped. I held it loosely, letting it wiggle around as the wind hit it, and the bike bogged down BIG TIME! Not fun holding a wire in one hand, bent over, and the handle bar in the other hand. I stopped at a gas station and took a look at what I was grabbing in the dark. Turned out to be the power wire with a 30A fuse inline. Went to work and used a meter to check continuity and voltage. Long story short, the end of the filament inside the fuse was bad. Couldn't see that from the glass and the fuse had continuity. When I shook the fuse really hard it lost continuity, but only when I was shaking it. Replaced the fuse and all works perfect. This isn't the first time I had problems with bad fuses. Even though they test out, the cost of replacing a fuse is well worth the headache and (in my case) the danger it can cause. The curious person I am, I wanted to know why the fuse was bad. I'll never know for sure, but my guess is age, vibration, and water. This was a fuse that should have been in a water resistant sheathing, not those plastice clip-together ones. Mike |
