Oct 2022 and a Puncture....
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I've mentioned before that I do quite a lot of miles and invariably get a few punctures each year with it. Normally I deal with them without issue, apart from an incident a few years years back when I discovered that the spare tube in my rucksack had a split, and, my patch glue had dried up!
Ooops, lesson learnt and I now check these things regularly.
Except..... my pump, which on the occasion of this picture refused to work until I had spent some time trying to work out which of the little valves in it was not working correctly. And then the spare tube, which I had previously checked, kept going down and I had to repump the tyre several times to get home.
Oh well, another adventure, and we made it back to base fortunately and only a little bit late for lunch.
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Dec 2022 and yes the pic is just for reference as this is my DRZ. I had decided to keep running the old DR through the winter as well but needed to wire in my Gerbing heated gear. This normally runs straight off the battery, but there is no battery on the DR!
There is a capacitor instead, but having never put a meter on the electrics I thought it best to check the working voltage. Fired up the bike and was pleased to see a steady 14V dc just like any bike with a battery. A couple of crimp connectors later and I had heating on tap and was able to enjoy being warm, in the cold.
A few weeks on and after stopping a couple of times to clear a way through some fallen trees the heat controller flashed red angrily at me and stopped working!
Well that was annoying, and later when home I checked the bike's voltage suspecting the regulator may have failed and blown the controller. Well, there it was again, a nice steady 14V no matter how much I revved the bike, hmm.After restarting the engine several times by pure chance I left the voltmeter connected when switching off and it jumped up to 30V!
Ooh. A few more tries and the voltmeter read 40, even 50V!Well, that's why the controller blew - when switching off the capacitor was dumping all of it's charge and giving out this voltage spike.
After studying the wiring diagram I worked out that when the ignition key is turned off it isolates everything electrical from the capacitor (or battery) so it stays in a charged state. But of course the heat controller is wired-on direct and subject to the high voltage.
However, using the kill switch instead, everything on the 12V line stays connected and the capacitor quickly drains through the lights, and there is no voltage spike. Of course, leaving the bike several minutes has the same effect as the capacitor drains away from internal leakage.
Anyway, whatever the cause or result - it was an expensive discovery!
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Last pic from 2022. It was Boxing Day and and I was unexpectedly presented with a few hours to myself so had to jump on my favourite bike and go for a quick spin.
Unfortunately I lost about 10 minutes of my precious time trying to kick the DR into life which was having one of its occasional temperamental moments ...
But once started it ran perfectly, as it always does, and I forgave its little indiscretion. It was soon back to being my favourite bike again
