Mystery Power Outage 84 R80

[Sutherngintelmen]

Guy name Bill Elliot drove a car in circles won ton's of money. Awesome Bill from Dawsonville. I think he bought most of the town.

And - curious - anyone do the Omega 450 Upgrade?

[Bill Harris]

Did the Omega upgrade 3-4 years ago. Good move.



--Bill

[hardwaregrrl]

Originally Posted by Sutherngintelmen

Guy name Bill Elliot drove a car in circles won ton's of money. Awesome Bill from Dawsonville. I think he bought most of the town.

And - curious - anyone do the Omega 450 Upgrade?

Yep, I've got the 450 as well. Downside is you need to buy an extra rotor as the stock only will swap in with the 400w system. After one rotor failed in '09, i've not had a problem.

[Sutherngintelmen]

Santa's coming early this year and he's got an Omega 450 in his bag

[RecycledRS]

Doubt you'll have any trouble without the PIAAs on. Enjoy you're ride, think Ill try and get in a ride too.

[Bill Harris]

Originally Posted by hardwaregrrl

Yep, I've got the 450 as well. Downside is you need to buy an extra rotor as the stock only will swap in with the 400w system. After one rotor failed in '09, i've not had a problem.

Still, the rotor is readily available from Rick and I'm getting an spare to carry when I go transcontinental.

--Bill

[hardwaregrrl]

Originally Posted by Bill Harris

Still, the rotor is readily available from Rick and I'm getting an spare to carry when I go transcontinental.

--Bill

I realize that Bill, but if switching from a stock system with a known good rotor, its an extra expense and something to point out when making a descison.

[photomd]

Mine did something similar on the stock system: charging would drop as it got warm, but not bad enough to show any problem when cold. I checked the entire system several times and installed two new batteries. In the garage, everything looked good. Then I used a heat gun to heat my rotor. The resistance opened up to infinity with heat and was reproducible...might be worth checking.

[Sutherngintelmen]

Seven hours on the bike and battery was electric. I added ADVMonster's voltometer (which I really like for peace of mind) and 1" of electrical tape to cracked casing wire under the hood (2:00 above the rotor.) Volt reading is a bit off multimeter but maybe because I didn't run the ground back to batt

I didn't run the PIAAs I had all in case- with stupid light Shorai, jump cables, bivvy and new aaa card. Beautiful day up there, the very last little bit of Fall. Had some gates open for hunters, saw some new places too.

Still going for Omega 450.

Ready



On board



Trail's end



Back in shed

[hardwaregrrl]

Nice! You'l get an exact reading if you run the voltmeter back to the battery, but it;s close enough

[Sutherngintelmen]

Speaking of readings.....

I am running the 'blue lead' back to pos on the batt and tapped ground behind lamp. I'm going to test gauge ground to neg batt and see if it gets all the way to multi meter - curiosity.

Volts read 13.9 - 14.1 almost all the day. As long as I was on the throttle or engine brakes above 2k revs volts were good. And I looked a lot.

Multi meter has been compared with another multi meter and I believe accurate. So, I'm .1 to .2 v > ADVmonster reading at the batt (pretty sure.)

Battery was hot last night ~ 13v and still is this eve.

I didn't press the PIAA button until I was in sight of the house. It knocked v down by .4 Math doesn't work for me - even though experience did.

If you believe the gauges, charge with PIAAs lit volts at batt would be 13.6 to 13.8. Seems plenty to keep a batt going let alone the absolute and complete death it suffered after 45 mins of road revving.

Omega 450.

[MotoKaw]

Originally Posted by Sutherngintelmen

*** Idiot light is operational but never chose to glow. ***

That's a confusing inconsistency, so maybe it's a clue. Compare it with this info, copied from the Omega site:


"Another refinement the Omega now offers is a fail-safe parallel circuit provided for the generator warning light bulb. On the original Bosch system design, the warning light circuit supplies the exciter current to the alternator rotor. If the circuit is interrupted by a blown bulb or a failed rotor winding or worn out brushes, the red light won't come on with the key and the alternator WILL NOT CHARGE ! Unfortunately, BMW nor Bosch ever seemed to really emphasize this important information. Even though bulb failures are actually very rare, it can be a real show stopper if you aren't aware that a red light that doesn't come on means a problem, just as surely as a red light that stays on all the time."

I would add 'poor/loose/intermittent connection' to the list of things that keep idiot bulbs from glowing and rotors from being excited. Perhaps the light chose not to glow during the ...

Originally Posted by Sutherngintelmen

*** 45 mins of road revving. ***

... because of an intermittant connection which tested fine later (thus, appeared 'operational'), and also worked fine on your most recent ride. Now that pattern is consistent with an intermittent electrical problem. They suck.


It sounds like the Omega's parallel circuit will at least bypass/moot the consequence of a bad idiot bulb circuit, and might even mask the symptom itself with higher output at lower rpm's (i.e., never triggering the light, even at idle, even with a good bulb circuit - I don't know, maybe Bill Harris can comment).

If you've already committed to the purchase then it's probably not worth digging into ... unless you want to know why the &#@*! you just had to spend $_____ to replace perfectly good parts because of a &#@*!'ing bad bulb connection. I feel your pain.

Schweeet bike, though!

Bob

[hardwaregrrl]

....you should come see us here.

[Sutherngintelmen]

Originally Posted by hardwaregrrl

....you should come see us here.

That's a great idea - is there a drop off option.

I could come back from out of town and be all zapped up with Omega 450.

Sounds like a great time - only thing missing is a band.

[Sutherngintelmen]

Originally Posted by MotoKaw

Schweeet bike, though!

Thanks - I really like it.

Thanks for the ideas too. A friend of mine sent me his Clasic Boxer Charging and I'm reading up on the finer points of how these pieces work in prep for more thorough go through along with Omega upgrade.

Just need a rainy day in December. Will take lots of pics so you guys can point out my FUps