Someone posted a thread with a title along the lines of "it just died" a while ago, it was not me but I like the title.
So a while ago while bimbling along a country back-road near to home my bike decided it preferred being a lawn ornament without a complete ignition fuse. It was blamed on an over-enthusiastic washing, which never quite sat right with me & some others here voiced concern over the prognosis at the time.
It was a shitty time for me, I was under time pressure that week, in a general bad place mentally but with an exit in site that involved money but required a working motorbike so after being given the all-clear by a dealer, I let it go without finding the real fault, as the miles-since-fault grew into the multiple-thousands I started to forget about it.
Well, shock horror it happened again today. This time though it happened at a healthy 70mph (honest officer) in the outside lane of a busy section of the M69. Of all the things I've imagined going wrong while on a bike that was just about my worst nightmare. Initially I indicated right but as I did so the median strip dissipated into nothingness, just a concrete barrier with a metal railing on the top. So, onto plan B & thanks to one particularly attentive 4x4 driver, some liberal beeping, hazard lights and much arm waving I got over to the hard shoulder and screamed "feck" in my helmet for about 5 minutes straight.
I called the RAC and resigned myself to a long wait for an expensive recovery & expensive everything really.
30 minutes later an RAC man in a van called Lindsey (the man, not the van) showed up. I was under no particular time pressure tonight, and after his optimism rubbed off on me we spent 90 minutes or so wriggling wires with a test lamp plugged over the ignition fuse. Finally with nearly all of the fairings off on the hard shoulder a cable behind the left frame cover just below the pillion grip was found it stripped, with the frame rubbed shiny too.
bingo.