Posted by The Older Gentleman on May 1, 2011, 5:23 pm
In this case, France, on a nice fast autoroute, on the BMW K1100LT which
suddenly lost all ignition (but retained all other electrical
functions).
Frantic blasts on the (very loud) BMW twin horns to my mate in front of
me were fruitless. I later discovered that he had earplugs in and didn't
hear a thing.....
Bike coasted to the hard shoulder and there was a squeak of alarm from
my wife on the pillion, as smoke was pouring from behind the right-hand
side panel. Not good.
Behind the panel, it was not good x10. Fifteen inches of wiring were
toast, with the copper core showing through the still-smouldering
insulation and sleeving.
Checked the fuses. Nothing blown, but they were *all* 15-amp, and had
presumably been that way since way before I bought the bike. I'd still
have expected an electrical short bad enough to cook the wiring to pop a
fuse, but still.
Another friend stopped and we surveyed the carnage. I had no breakdown
recovery insurance so the only thing to do was to try and fix it, and if
that failed, push it down the off-ramp we'd just passed, try and park it
at some Frenchman's house, find another means of getting to the hotel we
were heading for, and come out next weekend with a trailer to recover
it.
It was like Apollo 13. OK, tools. Besides the stock BMW toolkit, what do
we have? A Swiss Army knife. What raw materials? The remains of a roll
of red and white HazMat tape. Nothing else.
The wires were stripped of their charred insulation with the knife,
right up to the main loom and an inch or so inside it. Fine. Now we had
some lovely bare copper wires waving in the breeze. The HazMat tape was
sliced longitudinally, to eke it out, as it was all we had, and the
wires wrapped in it. Fingers crossed, and the starter was pressed, and
it ran.
Yay. The rest of the tape was applied, to make certain that absolutely
no bare wire was showing anywhere, and we set off. Huge fat storm clouds
were in front of us, and we stopped at the next service area and bought
a roll of grey tape whch was also applied, because it was evident we
were heading into a huge storm and it was unlikely the repair would be
entirely watertight. And we did, and luckily, it was.
The bodged repair lasted for the next two days and another 400 miles,
and we got back home a few hours ago. Next task is to buy some decent
connectors and new wires and effect a proper permanent repair.
First pic shows the repair efforts on the side of the autoroute. Second
pic shows the repair in all its red and white glory.
http://www.neil_murray.fastmail.fm/Wiringbodge1.jpg
http://www.neil_murray.fastmail.fm/Wiringbodge2.jpg
--
BMW K1100LT Ducati 750SS Kawasaki GPz750 Honda CB400F
Triumph Street Triple Suzuki TS250ERx2 GN250.
Higgler Supreme
chateau dot murray at idnet dot com
Posted by Mark Olson on May 1, 2011, 5:48 pm
On 5/1/2011 4:23 PM, The Older Gentleman wrote:
> Checked the fuses. Nothing blown, but they were *all* 15-amp, and had
> presumably been that way since way before I bought the bike. I'd still
> have expected an electrical short bad enough to cook the wiring to pop a
> fuse, but still.
Are they all *supposed* to be 15A? Electrical shorts can be funny things,
sometimes they pop the fuse immediately and other times they can hover
around just the right amount of current to fry something without popping
the fuse.
I looked at a BMW parts listing for the K1100LT, and the fuse box page
only shows a 15A fuse with a quantity of 'X' which means 'qty as
required'. Yet another page shows a list of fuses:
# Part Number Description lb Qty Each
02 61131370987 FUSE - 7,5A 0.01 X $0.77
02 61138364594 FUSE - 4A X $1.27
02 61131372626 FUSE - 15A X $1.46
02 61131386627 FUSE - 10A X $0.77
I'd double check and make sure that you've got the correct fuse rating
in the appropriate spots, but I'm fairly sure you've already decided
to do that.
I'm also surprised to see that BMW appear to offer quite a few replacement
electrical connectors as repair items, something the Japs would do well
to copy, although they're not cheap:
01 83300402336 REPAIR PLUG, 3-PIN - NO. 610611 0.04 1 $21.34
02 83300402337 REPAIR PLUG, 4-PIN - NO. 610612 0.05 1 $55.37
03 83300402338 REPAIR PLUG, 2-PIN - NO. 610613 0.02 1 $48.86
04 83300402339 REPAIR PLUG, 2-PIN - NO. 610614 0.04 1 $25.44
05 83300402340 REPAIR PLUG, 4-PIN - NO. 610615 0.04 1 $23.14
06 83300402341 REPAIR PLUG, 3-PIN - NO. 610616 1 $25.33
07 83300402342 REPAIR PLUG, 2-PIN - NO. 610617 0.04 1 $21.26
08 83300402343 REPAIR PLUG, 2-PIN - NO. 610618 0.04 1 $16.10
09 83300402344 REPAIR PLUG, 2-PIN - NO. 610619 0.02 1 $22.49
10 83300409690 REPAIR PLUG, 4-PIN - NO. 610621 1 $32.37
You can also buy a complete harness but it's eye-wateringly
expensive.
01 61112305600 CHASSIS WIRING HARNESS / ABS (from 07/93) 4.18 1 $1123.08
Posted by Datesfat Chicks on May 1, 2011, 7:42 pm
wrote:
>You can also buy a complete harness but it's eye-wateringly
>expensive.
>01 61112305600 CHASSIS WIRING HARNESS / ABS (from 07/93) 4.18 1 $1123.08
The full harness for my Honda is about $150. Not as much wire, but
...
The $1000+ wiring harness ... ouch!
DFC
Posted by The Older Gentleman on May 2, 2011, 3:07 am
> Are they all *supposed* to be 15A?
Definitely not
>Electrical shorts can be funny things,
> sometimes they pop the fuse immediately and other times they can hover
> around just the right amount of current to fry something without popping
> the fuse.
>
> I looked at a BMW parts listing for the K1100LT, and the fuse box page
> only shows a 15A fuse with a quantity of 'X' which means 'qty as
> required'. Yet another page shows a list of fuses:
>
> # Part Number Description lb Qty Each
> 02 61131370987 FUSE - 7,5A 0.01 X $0.77
> 02 61138364594 FUSE - 4A X $1.27
> 02 61131372626 FUSE - 15A X $1.46
> 02 61131386627 FUSE - 10A X $0.77
>
> I'd double check and make sure that you've got the correct fuse rating
> in the appropriate spots, but I'm fairly sure you've already decided
> to do that.
Oh yes.
It's only one small section of the harness that's damaged, so I can
repair it.
--
BMW K1100LT Ducati 750SS Kawasaki GPz750 Honda CB400F
Triumph Street Triple Suzuki TS250ERx2 GN250.
Higgler Supreme
chateau dot murray at idnet dot com
Posted by Datesfat Chicks on May 1, 2011, 7:46 pm
On Sun, 1 May 2011 22:23:48 +0100, totallydeadmailbox@yahoo.co.uk (The
Older Gentleman) wrote:
>Checked the fuses. Nothing blown, but they were *all* 15-amp, and had
>presumably been that way since way before I bought the bike. I'd still
>have expected an electrical short bad enough to cook the wiring to pop a
>fuse, but still.
That is a complex equation. I think that even at 200% current, fuses
are allowed by spec. on the order of 10s to blow.
But when you have 15A fuses where much lesser values should be ... it
makes it even worse.
>Another friend stopped and we surveyed the carnage. I had no breakdown
>recovery insurance so the only thing to do was to try and fix it, and if
>that failed, push it down the off-ramp we'd just passed, try and park it
>at some Frenchman's house, find another means of getting to the hotel we
>were heading for, and come out next weekend with a trailer to recover
>it.
>It was like Apollo 13. OK, tools. Besides the stock BMW toolkit, what do
>we have? A Swiss Army knife. What raw materials? The remains of a roll
>of red and white HazMat tape. Nothing else.
>The wires were stripped of their charred insulation with the knife,
>right up to the main loom and an inch or so inside it. Fine. Now we had
>some lovely bare copper wires waving in the breeze. The HazMat tape was
>sliced longitudinally, to eke it out, as it was all we had, and the
>wires wrapped in it. Fingers crossed, and the starter was pressed, and
>it ran.
>Yay. The rest of the tape was applied, to make certain that absolutely
>no bare wire was showing anywhere, and we set off. Huge fat storm clouds
>were in front of us, and we stopped at the next service area and bought
>a roll of grey tape whch was also applied, because it was evident we
>were heading into a huge storm and it was unlikely the repair would be
>entirely watertight. And we did, and luckily, it was.
>The bodged repair lasted for the next two days and another 400 miles,
>and we got back home a few hours ago. Next task is to buy some decent
>connectors and new wires and effect a proper permanent repair.
>First pic shows the repair efforts on the side of the autoroute. Second
>pic shows the repair in all its red and white glory.
>http://www.neil_murray.fastmail.fm/Wiringbodge1.jpg
>http://www.neil_murray.fastmail.fm/Wiringbodge2.jpg
I might have missed it, but one mystery that I'm not clear on is what
went wrong and why simple tape repairs still allowed the bike to
operate.
In other words, what happened to the original fault that caused the
smoke?
DFC
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> presumably been that way since way before I bought the bike. I'd still
> have expected an electrical short bad enough to cook the wiring to pop a
> fuse, but still.