I need a professional opinion

I have an 88 1000f hurricane. The bike ran fine until I tried to jump start it off of an S-10 pickup. now it wil only start about once out of every 100 tries, has nowhere near the ***** that it used to, and dies if you let it idle for a minute. I have checked the ignition troubleshooting guide in the service manual; I have narrowed it down to 2 possible problems. either the ignition control module, or the ignition pulse generator. In the service manual it tells you to test the current comming from the ignition pulse generator to be sure that you have a minimum of 0.7volts of peak power. If you have this then your ignition control module is bad and if you don't, your ignition pulse generator is bad. I have 0.4 volts measured. Before I try to buy an insainly expensive ignition control module, I wanted to check with the forum to see if the the 0.3 volts that I'm missing could really cause all of these problems. Can anyone help me?

 

Im sure some of the vets will stop by with some more useful advice.

I was just wondering if jumping our bikes from cars/trucks have potential damage? And if so, would it cause the ICM to fry?

 

If the jumping vehicle is running, yes it has a very good chance of frying something.

 

Oh sweet, Im so glad I jumped my bike with vehicles that were off..!!

 

If 0.3of 0.7 voltreally is missing it would cause a problem. However, have you really measured the voltage open circuit and with a peak-voltmeter? Normal voltmeters will measure the average voltage, which usually is about half the peak voltage (to over simplify it). The peak voltage could e.g. be measured with an oscilloscope, or leave it to a Honda dealer or car electric shop to measure since they will have a peak-voltage adapter, that is stated in the manual. Or perhaps you know someone having an oscilloscope that can measure the true peak-voltage.

Measure the resistance on the pulse generator, which should be about 500 ohms. In case it is that, I guess the pulse generator is OK since it delivers voltage, which may be correct if you have not measured peak-voltage.

The ECU is also a part that includes electronics that is very sensitive to over-voltages, so it is more likely to fail in a situation like this. It is however not normal that an ECU fails so it runs perfectly one time out of 100. It is normally either dead or works all the time.

Have you checked that there is no spark when the bike fails to start? It could not be excluded that there is something other wrong than the pulse generator or the ECU. But if it is either of them, and the basic problem is over-voltagefrom jumpstart, the ECU is the part that will be sensitive for this. There could also be other problems like the R/R being killed from jumpstart and now shortening the battery. Is the bike turning fine on its own battery now?

 

R/R?

Since my last post I did get the bike started after charging form about four hours and using a booster to jump it. Strange but it just started right up, yesterday i turned it over till I got pissed off andfinally gave up on it. I drove it around for about an hour, but when I shut it off I couldn't get it to start back up. I did check for spark and the plugs are firing. not very strong but they are still firing. No... the bike won't turn over for more than about 10 or 15 seconds on it's own.

 

Aah, it seems to be good news then, that the bike runsfine when the batteryis freshly charged if I understand you right. The next step will then be to investigate if the battery is failedor the charging system or both.

 

it would be sick to think that I was almost to the point of spending a lot of money if it's something as simple as the battery. The charging system works fine, I did check that the last time it was running. I am more of a car machanic and would not have thought that a dead battery could be the couse for all of this. I'll replace the battery and stop back by here

 

If all else fails, I have a spare ECU.......
I think your battery could be the problem - ECU's either work, or they don't.
Crazy thought - is your kill switch and /or sidestand switch functioning correctly ?
That would account for the 1/100 starts - I know you said you checked it all, but there may be an intermittent faukt, which, when coupled to the poor battery, would cause you this problem..... I've seen that before........

 

my side stand switch is straight wired. I will check the rest of the kill lines and replace the battery. I am out of town right now. as soon as I get back I will let ya'll know how things went....Thanks for all the help.