SCraig
05-21-2008, 06:53 PM
Long story short, my V-Strom died on me about a month ago and left me stranded 150 miles from home. Luckily I was with a friend who live only 40 miles away and had a trailer. He rode home, got his trailer, and came back for me. He was also kind enough to bring my bike the remaining 115 miles to Nashville a week later. It behaved exactly as if it ran out of gas; coughed a couple of times and died.
When I got it home I found out that the problem was intermittent. It would run fine for a while, and then it would dump again. Took me running it in the basement several times over a period of a week before I could reproduce the problem, but I finally did. I have an extended warranty but didn't want to take it to the shop only to hear, "We couldn't reproduce the problem" so I made sure it was broke when I sent it over.
They kept it about 10 days. The tech that worked on it is very, very good and finally tracked the problem down. There is a wiring harness beneath the airbox. Not the lid of the airbox, but beneath the box itself. Inside that harness is the wire that goes from the stator pickup wire to the ECU, and right next to that wire is a ground wire. On the bottom of the airbox is a clip holding a vacuum hose. That clip was positioned wrong and over time sawed its way into the wiring harness. When things vibrated just right it would ground the wire from the stator to the ECU, effectively shutting down the ECU. No spark, no fuel injection, no nothing but a dead bike.
When working on your bike take time to look for crimps in wiring harnesses and things that might cut into them. This one took over 22,000 miles and 2 years to show up but when it did the bike was stone cold dead. Luckily I had an extended warranty that covered it, so all I'm out is the aggravation and the $100 I paid my friend for bringing my bike to Nashville.
When I got it home I found out that the problem was intermittent. It would run fine for a while, and then it would dump again. Took me running it in the basement several times over a period of a week before I could reproduce the problem, but I finally did. I have an extended warranty but didn't want to take it to the shop only to hear, "We couldn't reproduce the problem" so I made sure it was broke when I sent it over.
They kept it about 10 days. The tech that worked on it is very, very good and finally tracked the problem down. There is a wiring harness beneath the airbox. Not the lid of the airbox, but beneath the box itself. Inside that harness is the wire that goes from the stator pickup wire to the ECU, and right next to that wire is a ground wire. On the bottom of the airbox is a clip holding a vacuum hose. That clip was positioned wrong and over time sawed its way into the wiring harness. When things vibrated just right it would ground the wire from the stator to the ECU, effectively shutting down the ECU. No spark, no fuel injection, no nothing but a dead bike.
When working on your bike take time to look for crimps in wiring harnesses and things that might cut into them. This one took over 22,000 miles and 2 years to show up but when it did the bike was stone cold dead. Luckily I had an extended warranty that covered it, so all I'm out is the aggravation and the $100 I paid my friend for bringing my bike to Nashville.