Funny broken bike story

So me and my brother in law are off to superbike school next week. Each time we go to a track day, we invariably find something wrong with one of our bikes two days beforehand. Usually it's stuff like fork seals, chains, sprockets, etc. Either way, this kind of stuff seriously puts me into panic mode so we made a pact to get our bikes sorted at least three weeks out from a track day. I sorted my CBR1000RR out last weekend - brake pads needed changing, wouldn't you know it?

I figured my bro has done the same to his track bike (K1 GSX-R1000) but he tells me today at mother's day lunch that he found out today his bike won't start, and he's thinking of cancelling his superbike school booking. He's tried everything, etc. I was all "whoa dude, let me take a look at it first tonight!". He wasn't fully convinced, but I went over there this evening anyway. Here's how the diagnostics went:

Bike will crank fine, but just won't start. We try the old WOT start (flooded maybe?) but still nada, so I take a piece of paper towel and roll it into a stick shape. This we shove down the intake tracts to where the injectors spray fuel into the intake throat, and we hold the throttle at WOT and crank it. Guess what - no fuel.

I know my bro' has a Yoshimura EMS - basically a Powercommander III - on his bike, so I figure it's worth taking that out of the loop. Disconnect it, plug the injector harness direct to the stock ECU aaaannndd....she fires up straight away. Hmmm, guess that EMS has shot itself which is nothing new as he's already had a PCIII go bad on his ZX-12R (his commuter bike). We spend a good 40 minutes Googling other folks with similar problems and don't really find much. Not to worry though, I tell him to take her for a spin around the block to see how she runs without the EMS tune. At this point we pack up and I tell him to disconnect the EMS box.

As I'm walking out the door I point to the battery and start to say "so yeah just disconnect the EMS from the negative battery terminal" but I only get as far as "to the NEG...." and see that he's got the EMS box plugged into the POSITIVE battery terminal. Whoa there, Nellie!
So I say "hey, when did you last take the battery out", to which he replied "oh, recently". I asked if he'd tried starting the bike afer that. Answer: Nope.

Sure enough, one small relocation from the positive terminal to the negative terminal and reconnection of the EMS to the injector harness results in success!! Bike starts and EMS box with its custom map is working!

Thank god for diodes - if not for that his EMS and possibly his ECU may have let the magic blue smoke escape!

My FIRST RULE question when working on someone else's bike: What is the last thing you worked on? More times than not, their answer leads me to the problem.

[image: View Post]sarge, on 08 May 2011 - 07:06 AM, said:

My FIRST RULE question when working on someone else's bike: What is the last thing you worked on? More times than not, their answer leads me to the problem.

Unfortunately the last thing he worked on was his clutch! I did ask about that (thinking it was a neutral switch, etc) but his bike cranked over which led me to move past that as a cause (most bikes won't crank if it's a neutral switch problem).

I absolutely love spannering, but he rarely asks me for help because he thinks he's imposing on my time!

One of the kids in the Aero club do something like that all the time. They power up the transmitter and fire up the receiver, and ten minutes later they realize they never plugged the motor in.

Good thing nothing blew out from the reversal of charge.

ALWAY ASK YOURSELF WHAT DID I DO LAST !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've done that with the PCIII on my RC51. Doesn't help that they made the battery connection RED! :mad:

[image: View Post]KPerham, on 08 May 2011 - 10:14 AM, said:

I've done that with the PCIII on my RC51. Doesn't help that they made the battery connection RED! :mad:

I'll give my brothe the benefit there too - same thing with the Yoshi EMS. Apparently the EMS is basically a PCIIIr in disguise!!