No electrics at all, battery fine, fuses fine

[thatbloke]

Hi folks,

I rode in to work, no drama. Went to leave work at the end of the day and nothing happened when I turned the key, no servo noise, no lights on the dash at all, absolutly not a thing.

I thought perhaps I must have left it on parking lights and flattened the battery so I came in the next day with a multimeter and battery charger. Multimeter gives a happy 12.7 to 12.8v on the terminals, so the battery is fine.

30 amp fuses under the transparent cover are fine, ignition fuse under the adjacent black cover looks fine.

can't see any obvious signs of vandalism or signs of disconnected cables. Can't see obvous weirdness with the ignition block or controls.

I had the 1 year service about 3-4 weeks ago, so I rang the dealer and asked the dealer what cables if any them might have unplugged so that I can check if one of those has come loose but they state they don't need to disconnect any for the 1 year service. It's had the DVLA recall wiring lomb work done at the dealer before this.

Sadly I can't rip it apart in the work shared car park to diagnose it properly.

Any ideas? I'm stumped and it's going back to the dealer otherwise. I googled but not many other people seem to have had this so it must be something weird.

[edited to fix typo]

[greywolf]

First, tighten all the battery cable connections. If that doesn't help, it's probably the battery. You can't declare a battery good just by taking a voltage reading.  It needs to be tested under load. There is a way to connect the battery directly to the starter motor. Watch the voltmeter while connected to the battery and short the two terminals on the starter relay together with a large metal object. Be careful and wear eye protection though as there will be sparks if the battery is good. Chances are the voltmeter reading will drop precipitously.

[porter]

I've had mine not start because of the earth lead but I still had all the electrics just not tthe starter. Maybe the connectors below the tank involved in the recall? First thing I would do is get a set of jump leads  on the battery as my brother had a firebale that went that way, started, run for 30 mile the just died.

[In me shed]

+1 for the jump leads, I use a jump start pack just cos I have one. When my beemer wouldn't start and the battery voltage was testing OK it worked a treat. If it doesn't work straight across the battery (which I suspect it won't if you got no electrics) I would try connecting the +ve to the battery +ve and the -ve to a good earth on the frame to bypass the battery earth.

Happy to be corrected if this is not a sensible test.

[mr_diver]

There is no earth on the bike... aluminium frames don't do too well with earthing the frame.

The loom has a return negative wire running throughout.

But be very very careful jump starting modern vehicles. You can easily fry an ECU on both vehicles if there is a short or surge in one side.

My first point would be to clean and tighten the battery terminals.
Load test the battery- with the multi meter on the battery, turn on the ignition and see what the voltage reads.
Swap the fuses with spares as some fuses look good but have burnt out where you can't see.
After that I'd be stripping the plastics and tank off and checking along the loom.

But that's on a bike out of warranty. If it's under warranty it's the dealers problem.

[SuMo]

While checking the battery terminals also look at the ground connection to the engine. It was a recall issue. Not sure if your bike was or still is a candidate. Read links below for more info



Warning From My Dealer - Earth Connection  - http://www.v-strom.co.uk/smf/index.php?topic=26555.msg264572#msg264572

Starting problems  - http://www.v-strom.co.uk/smf/index.php?topic=28295.msg281312#msg281312

Recalled for Three Separate Electrical Issues  - http://blog.motorcycle.com/2016/01/11/manufacturers/Suzuki/Suzuki-v-strom-1000-recalled-for-three-separate-electrical-issues/

[thatbloke]

er, fixed it... and I'm really sorry but I don't know which of two things I did fixed it, but I hope this helps someone else.

In a last ditch effort to rule out the impossible before a van came to take it away I thought it could (not) be:
* sidestand related, because the bike always runs fine on the sidestand with it up or down and I thought I remembered the sidestand safety feature leaves the instrumentation intact when it kills the engine if you try to ride off with it down.
* topple sensor related, because it hasn't toppled (where it was parked there wasn't room to the RH side for the bike to fall and no damage on the bike) and my bike has always started OK even after it has toppled and the topple kill sensor has activated (christmas period, 5.5 hour ride to keswick, arrived with full petrol and luggage at 3:00am and tried to do a u-turn on a hill)

I'd like to apologise in advance that I wasn't scientific about this and made two changes at once (I just didn't think it would be either of these things)...

I went and sat on the bike and with some deliberate speed brought it upright and slightly leaning to the other side to try and reset any tilt sensor (I have no idea of the mechanics behind the tilt/topple sensor on the DL, I was just guessing how it operates), and (sadly) at the same time I kicked the sidestand off.

The bike then lit up perfectly with the key, and started perfectly, as if nothing had happened. I turned it off, put it back on the sidestand and started it with it on the sidestand. No problems. Rode it home later with no drama.

so annoyingly:
* If originally I had just brought the bike upright and kicked in the sidestand in instead of starting it normally I might never have noticed there had been any issue
* If the van had come to take it away they would have put the sidestand in, wheeled it upright into the van, and there would have been no fault found... I would have been frustrated, the dealer would have been frustrated... and the fault never diagnosed.

I'm a bit stumped as to what happened but will ask dealer to take a look now that I can ride it to them and especially now that it's likely one of two things.

Thanks for all the suggestions folks, I will post any eventual conclusion here.

[greywolf]

The tip over switch will cause an FI to display. It is reset by turning the ignition off and on again with the bike upright. The side stand switch will display a CHEC if in gear with the stand not fully up. Neither will cause a total electrical blackout. Since your battery is able to run things now, a connection at at least one end of one of the large cables not making proper contact is your most likely problem and it will likely come back if left alone.

[thatbloke]

OK, problem solved

First: Thanks for all the battery earthing comments, I wasn't ignoring the suggestions and did do my best to check but it had broken down in a shared and guarded corporate car park which resulted in me getting pounced on by security when I was checking the battery earthing.

The bike is under warranty and I've no off road maintenace facilities so I had to take it to the dealer. As per previous post it oddly fixed itself and then the dealer dragged their heels about booking it in and eventually (as predicted by greywolf) it happened again and this time after a fews days of no bike and silence from the dealer I gave up and had it recovered to a different dealer.

New dealer replaced the ignition switch and was a bit hesitant to describe something that had happened or been done to the ignition coupling that they'd addressed, but didn't seem to want to talk about it. So I wonder if something happened during the recall work for the ignition and loom at the other dealer, but I'm just happy that it's fixed.

Oh and at the same time the new dealer replaced the dodgy ECU, J00 - > J02, without a bat of an eyelid, and fixed the lock mechanism on the Sukuki side pannier. Thought I'd post and give a happy ending to it all.

[UK_Vstrom650]

Glad all sorted. Sounds like your new dealer deserves a name drop 

[Hugh Mungus]

Yes, your new dealer deserves a mention. Maybe the not so good dealer deserves a mention too, I am sure that both dealers will be impressed in different ways.

did do my best to check but it had broken down in a shared and guarded corporate car park which resulted in me getting pounced on by security when I was checking the battery earthing.

At least you can now be confident that security are actually keeping an eye on things.

[wurzel]

Glad you got it sorted out, the dealer who fixed it sounds very good, and worth knowing, give them a mention here if you like, it's nice to have an itinerary of helpful service points around the country.

[thatbloke]

Yep good point. The place that sorted everything was Kings Two Wheel Centre in Oxford. Fast turn around, kept me informed, and instantly knew about the ECU problem etc. I'll use them for future work.