Well, I’ve had a delightful and educational afternoon!
Because
everyone, AND my Aunt Mildred..was bugging me about Lucille’s lackadaisical charging voltage (
ARE we surprised, I mean, it’s frickin’ Lucille right?), I went out to the DCW and swapped the nearly new battery in the ‘78E for the 3-1/2 year old one in the ‘76C . The fact that she has started instantaneously on the button
every single time since last summer...meant nothing to you naysayers and gloom merchants. So, I did the battery swap and since I hadn’t done so yesterday, I popped the fuel tank back on and hit the button....aannnidd....no start.
Lots of cranking, plus major occurrences of the “
spoon down the garburator” noise (so apt - thanks Mailman) but no
kablatta, kablatta. Geeezzzz Louise - I’ve got two busy days in the office and Lakeview is arriving on Tuesday night to load the danged bike and then we’re off to NC chop-chop on Wednesday morning - and I have a dead bike. Shits of hell! Everything else worked perfectly, but it was like there was no spark - and so I checked and by golly...there was no spark.
Well, I broke out the multimeter and started checking and all the fuses were good. More cranking and utensil gringing, aaannnddd... nothing.
Sooooo...I started snooping around and it turned out that in the process of removing and reinstalling the fuel tank, I had jarred loose the power connection to the coil which is under the tank. I guess one could attribute the NO spark condition to that broken connection. I fixed that and the bike started right up - so I reinstalled the fuel tank but in the process of doing that, I inadvertently jarred loose the main power connection (the one with the 20A fuse) so when I had her all buttoned up again, I turned the key and got....NOTHING AT ALL!
Lucille was as cold and dark as when I got her in February of 2016.
Sooooo, off comes the tank -
again - and after more poking around and indecorous language and I found the bad connection - and now we’re back in business. I have now taped the offending bullet connectors to ensure that they don’t disconnect themselves at an inopportune moment at the VYR.
This whole process took about 2 hours and ruined my plans for nice little test ride and warmup session for an oil change. Dang it.
I need a break - and after the next two days, I will REALLY need a break.
Pete