| Author | Message | ||
     Saintly |
I'm working on a friends firebolt. history: His charging system acted up a few months ago, so he replaced the regulator. It's been good since. Now: I rode it to my shop and it died half way there, battery was dead. Pushed it to a gas station & got a 5-min charge. Fired it up & rode 4 miles. Then it lost power, lights got dim, and eventually died again. Pushed it the rest of the way. Once at my shop, I charged the batt, & fired it up. 12.4 volts at the batt with engine running. Creeps slowly down to 11.64 even if revved. Pulled sprocket cover off to access regulator/stator connector, & performed all 3 tests as per manual. Both components(stator & reg) pass the tests. Plug everything back together & start bike. Now I have 13.87 volts at idle. WTF? So, I wiggle the connector. Voltage drops to 12.02, wiggle it again - 14v! I spend 10 minutes examining the connector but I can seee no problem. Then I see this:  Stator wires pass between the starter motor and a hose above the tranny. I pull it to the left and see this:  Looks like the hose clamp is digging into the stator harness. Remove starter:  Strip conduit away from harness and sure enough:  Bottom 2 wires in the picture were pierced and shorted together. Look for this! It can burn you and ruin your day. | ||
| Ccryder |
Fritz: Good find! That maybe an issue for most of us in the long term. Look now and avoid a problem. Is that rubber hose a drain line back to the crankcase (low pressure)? MY ST13 had a recall due to a similar chaffing problem. The wire harness, for the fuel pump rubbed on a sharp corner of the lower fuel tank and would blow the fuel pump fuse. A little reroute and rubber sheet cured the problem. Is there enough room to raise the harness? Or enough room to rotate the rubber line and offending clamp? Or place some buffer material b/t the clamp and wire harness? Thx Neil S. BTW great picts. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
Hey Fritz, Bike's dirty.  Good find. My concern is with the system as a whole. I believe there is a design issue based upon usage. The system generates just enough power at 1050RPM. At 5,000-Redline it generates too much power. I may have gotten a bad unit, but I believe a VR and Stator should last longer than 15,000 miles. | ||
| Typeone |
excellent post. thanks, Saintly!  | ||
| Sweatmark |
Saintly, Ditto on the great info! Now on my To Do list for XB bullet-proofing. Anybody have an idea why that transmission vent hose is so mondo huge? Interested in changing both the hose and its fitting as part of cylinder breather consolidation project, with installation of catch can. | ||
| Reepicheep |
Nice find! Thanks for posting! | ||
| Diablobrian |
Nice catch Fritz! Thanks for posting it up with pics, I'm sure that it will help someone out there that is pulling their hair out in frustration. | ||
| Rays |
Excellent sleuthing - thanks for sharing that! | ||
| Blake |
Sweat, Would you please post your tranny breather question to the "Breathers" page. Thanks.  | ||
| Firebolteric_ma |
Good find there Fritz....You Da Man! | ||
| Chrisp |
Thanks for the heads up. I checked mine last night and found the wire harness was routed on the other side of the breather hose and fitting. There's not a lot of room there either, but it doesn't chafe on the crimp on the breather hose. | ||
| Saintly |
When I checked my firebolts, I found the 03' had it routed to the left of the hose just like the pics above. But, my 07' has it on the right, jammed between the hose and the tappet section of the case. I spun the hose clamp around on the 03' so as to eliminate this from happening to my stator wires. | ||
| Jstfrfun |
Nice piks, Just got me a 06 12R with a 44 code blinking and a 16 code blinking that says the tilt sensor is bad... were the heck is the tilt sensor on a 06 R |
