Gerbing Maintenance

 Took the Valkyrie out for a nice little spin today. Almost too warm
for the Gerbs, but..what the hell.. no extra charge for some toasty
fingers.

So off I go, but not feeling the warmth.. so no big deal, I figure I
must have a loose or poor connection someplace. I've got the
controller mounted on the bike, down below the fuel petcock, next to
the seat key-lock, where it wires to the 15A fused connection to the
battery.

So I get her home later this afternoon after a nice little local ride
and I figure it's got to be the plug connector between the controller
and the fused battery pigtail, so I take off the sidecover and dig out
the connector and clean it up.. no go.. the little flashing light on
the controller isn't flashing and no heat. I get out the voltmeter and
it reads 12.3V ..so I'm thinking maybe I have a bad controller. So I
take the controller over to the EGC and plug into it's pigtail. Right
away the little flashing light starts blinking on the controller and I
plug in a glove and presto/warmo. hmmm.... So the controller is solid
state and it costs money, so it must be good. (I think.) Maybe, I
still have a poor, high-resistance, connection someplace, after all,
that pigtail has been on there since.. umm.. 2001.

So I did some more, and low and behold, here's the little inline fuse.
All covered up with it's little plastic cap.. hmm... let's look at the
fuse. It's uhm... yuck.. all brown and nasty on one side, I take
pliers and pull it out and it is fused completely on one side right
into the melted nasty looking female side of the fuseholder, here is
in fact the problem, it's just a nasty messy melty toasted inline fuse
that is evidently still allowing some current and some voltage, but
not enough.

Luckily I had an extra pigtail in the house as Gerbing seems to give
you one of these each time you buy one of their products. I wire in
the new one, and I guess I'm good for another 7 years.

Okay Mr. Cold do your worst, I'm ready for ya!

 
MARK 1 (see below)


MARK 2 (see below)


With respect to MARK 1 (above).

If you disconnected to take the voltage reading, be aware that a typical DVM
has an input impedance of around 10 megaohms, so even a very bad connection
would read full voltage.  It isn't until you load it that the voltage sags.

If you didn't disconnect it, some electronic controllers will (as a software
strategy) abort what they're doing if the voltage sags too much.  Or, some
have what is called an LVI reset circuit in them, so you can get into a
cycle of:

a)Unit starts, software initializes, etc.

b)Software turns on load (handgrips).

c)Voltage sags, tripping LVI reset circuit.  Microcontroller is forced into
reset, which usually sends its I/O pins into a high-impedance state, usually
turning off the output load immediately.

d)Load is released, so voltage comes back up.  Start again at (a).

One can get the same effects with controllers without software in them.
Depends on the design.

The frequency of the cycle (a) through (d) depends primarily on the startup
time of the software.  In fact, if the startup time is sizeable (maybe
100-500ms), a DVM might still read 12.3 volts, because the voltage is mostly
at 12.3 volts with brief dips every so often.

With respect to MARK 2 (above):  How many times does The Lizard need to give
grammar lessons?  "it's pigtail"?  That should be "its pigtail".

The Lizard.

 I've had that happen to the connector between the controller and jacket
liner, just melted and lost a connection.  I noticed for a long time the
connector was getting really hot and not much longer it failed.  I replaced
it with a heavier plug and socket and its a lot cooler to the touch now and
the jacket heats up well.

B~

 

Yep, I hadn't noticed any decrease in heat over the last few weeks,
but I hadn't been using it that much. I was surprised how nasty
looking this inside of that fuse holder looked and the fuse itself was
toast, but seemed to still be conducting intermittently.

The bike is 7 years old and has 87K miles so it's seen a lot of
current run through those wires. Gotta' expect little things like that
once in a awhile.