The battery thread, redux...

[geechie]

Guys,

I dragged some of the pertinent parts of this thread from the MSN Group. I'd appreciate any help you might be able to offer.

George

Clipped Thread and replies follow:

My old lead-acid battery is finally knackered. It had gotten pretty low on charging power, so I pried up the tank and added some distilled water and put it on the Tender overnight. When I attempted to fire it up, it only would run on one cylinder (right). This had happened once before, the first time I let the battery get a bit dry. That time, once I got the battery back to life, it ran fine.

So I went out and bought a new Odyssey. Hooked it up and same deal — runs on the right jug only. I've got it on the charger now. Is it gonna come back to life?

Bummed.

George


From Ron...

How hard is it to test spark at the plug with an oilhead? It has never occurred to me to think about that, but you'd have to pull up that plastic thingie and then pull the cap off the plug. Maybe stick any old sparking plug in the cap and hold it against the cylinder and crank the starter to see if you're getting spark. If there's no spark, then that at least narrows down the possibilities.

ron


From Dean...

First, install a new set of spark plugs, second, keep the Battery Tender Jr. when you are not riding and parked at home, might have some water in the gas, if in a humid country, keep the tank full rather than at a lower level. Add some additive to the fuel tank that cause water to mix with the gas and as a result will burn the mix.

Good luck

Dean O
Granpa Hoon


To which I reply...

Thanks guys. Don't think it's water in the fuel. That's never been a problem before. I did pull the plug on the left side and it looked fine — gap was OK too. Did not check to see that it was getting fire on that side however.

Perhaps it's coincidence, but the symptom is so exactly like before, I think it must be somehow related to the battery problem.

Here's another bit of information. The terminals on the new Odyssey are on top as opposed to being in a dropped notch of the original battery. I had plenty of slack on the positive side, but no such luck on the negative. So I borrowed the connecting link from the old battery and finagled it onto the new battery which just gave me enough to get the (-) terminal connected. Could I possibly have insufficient grounding?

Thanks again.

George

P.S. Spell Check works. Nice Job!

G

[Sir Limpsalot]

I doubt very much that it's the battery. If it has sufficient life to crank the engine it can certainly fire the plugs.
Remove both plugs and compare how they look, if the right cylinder is working then that plug should look normal. Does the left plug look the same?
That is to say no sooty deposits, not damp with unburnt fuel? etc etc.
Connect the plug(s) back into their HT caps and earth them securely against the heads, crank the engine on the starter and check for spark on both.
If the right one sparks and the left one doesn't swap them over and re-check.
If the left one now sparks and the right doesn't then you simply have a duff plug. Replace it.
If however the left one still doesn't spark but the right does then you have an ignition fault on the left side.
1150R's run a "wasted spark" system (meaning both plugs fire together - one cyl on the compression stroke the other on the exhaust) through a dual output ignition coil. If one side of the coil sparks through the HT lead and cap and the other side doesn't then swop the leads side to side (same as you did with the plugs) if the problem swops sides then change the lead/cap.
If the problem stays on the same side even though you've swopped the leads then the coil itself has an internal fault.
Of course if you get a spark on both plugs but one cylinder doesn't fire then your problem is not ignition related at all. If that proves to be the case report back here and we'll go through the simple checks you can do to the fuel system.
Good luck, Si

[geechie]

Thanks, Si. I think I can handle all that.

George

[geechie]

I tell people all the time not to confuse correlation with cause.

OK, do as I say, not as I do.

The first time when I had a battery problem I had the same running on one cylinder problem. I got the battery squared away, and both cylinders came back to life. Seemed like a pretty clear case of cause and effect.

So this time, when I had a battery problem and the running on one cylinder deal came up, I reasoned that there was a connection. Wrong!!

I think the problem was a ham-fisted wrench workin' on my bike.

I took the advice given, and checked for spark. Yep, a nice fat one. Ergo, it was a fuel problem. So I started looking closely at the throttle linkage.

Note the first picture. It's the right side throttle cable. Note how the cable end fits into the socket of the knurled adjuster. That's how it's supposed to look.

http://r1150r.smugmug.com/photos/52312963-M.jpg

Note the position of the cable in pic 2.

http://r1150r.smugmug.com/photos/52312959-M.jpg

Apparently, in the process of hoisting up the tank to get at the battery, this amateur wrench had also hoisted up the throttle cable on the right side, and propped it up on the edge of the adjuster. Doh!!

Plopped it back into place and voila! Both cylinders firing beautifully. I'm a happy dude!!

Now, would somebody please tell me exactly how this screw-up resulted in the engine only running on the one cylinder??

Thanks.

George

[Sir Limpsalot]

Sadly the pics didn't work, and trust me I am am this site's leading expert on not uploading pics properly, no one can even approach me for my consistant inability to do this right!
Why didn't that cylinder fire? I imagine that the mixture was screwed to the point that it became uncombustible, the ECU would be switching the injector for "idle" mixture but the throtle body was letting in way too much air to keep the mixture correct.
Glad you got 'er sorted mate.
Si

[Sir Limpsalot]

Bugger me! the first time I looked at your post the pics just had the same black squares with a red cross in the middle that I get.
When I went back, having sent the above reply, you had pics there!
I don't even begin to understand this lark.............................
Si

[geechie]

Si,

And yesterday, when I first posted the pics, they showed up rather blurry. Today, they're sharp as a tack. I'm doing this from my dial-up connection at home. Don't know if thats part of the problem or not. All in all; very strange.

Thanks for the advice and opinions. Greatly appreciated!

George

[fganger]

Personally, I've found that almost every problem I've ever had with the Internet can be traced to a dial-up connection. I would be willing to bet that if the images were smaller, about 50 to 80 K, they would have worked better. From the clarity of your images, I imagine they are closer to 200 K or larger. I'm sure in Windows there is a simple, push a button, program to make images for the Internet or e-mail smaller. However, I'm not able to do this with my Mac - I don't think.

Glad you figured out the problem. By the by, the advice you received about your battery in general is sage advice.

Frank

[geechie]

Actually, Frank, they're both in the neighborhood of 60K. Shrunk 'em down and added the arrows in Photoshop Elements. They just started out as very high quality. I try to be very conscious of bandwidth limitations.

George

[socalrob]

Geechi,

I bet when you lifted the tank the first time you had a dry battery that you disturbed the throttle cables just enough to fix the running of the bike the first time, so it wasn't "battery" related, it was "screwing with the battery" related. So the second time, bikes running rough after battery service, it just seems so logical that it has to be battery related.

Its a wonder we ever get anything as complicated/simple as a bike fixed. Way too many variable. I can't even imagine what the engineers of the space shuttle have to contend with. At least you got it solved. I'm impressed.

Is it possible you have extra slack in the throttle cable?

[geechie]

Is it possible you have extra slack in the throttle cable?
Well anything is possible. Rode in to work today and the bike is running pretty smoothly. I'll do a throttle body rebalance this weekend though. Like chicken soup... It couldn't hurt.

George

[fganger]

George,

Man if those images are about 60k, you must be using one hell of a lens on your camera. By the by, did you notice that Nikon is going to stop film cameras for the most part?

Frank