2006 F4i wont start after a swim :)
 

ok so first off a little back story.... bettery yet long story short, I crashed on a turn that happen to go onto a bridge and me and the bike went for a swim in the river below.


Now cosmetically there wasn't much damage, dent in exhaust pipe, broken mirror, a few small cracks in the fairings and my gauge cluster doesn't work. the N, F1, and blinker lights work but that's it on the cluster.


Did not try to start it until I got some work done on it.
1. I drained all the oil and water out of the motor, filled with fresh oil. waited a few days and pulled the drain plug to see if anymore water was in it. Clean oil is all I got.
2. Pulled off the full exhaust and drained some water out of that.
3. pulled all the plugs and only one cylinder had water in it. Sucked it all out. This one had the valves open.
4. pulled off throttle body and the 3 cylinders that had no water had water under throttle body but valves were closed so no water go in.
5. Pulled off the fuel tank, and fuel pump. cleaned them really well. Fuel pump works.
6. Pulled off all injectors and fuel rail. Cleaned them well. Tested all fuel injectors and they work.
7. Put everything back together, charged battery, fresh fuel, new spark plugs and went to start all I got was a click.
8. Suspecting that compression rings from one cylinder might have rusted in place I removed stator cover and manually turned motor. It was indeed a little stuck.
9. Stator cover back on, try to start; motor turns over then stops, doesn't run. try to start again and get a click from starter relay.
10. take of stator cover again and manually turn motor over, repeat step nine, repeat 10 and then get 9.
11. Take off all coil sticks and check ohm resistance and they check out to be good.
12. Bypass and check fuel pump, it works.
13. Check battery its at 12.4 turn keys it stays steady. Turn on kill switch, fuel pump kicks on and primes drops to 12.2 then goes back up to 12.4 go to start and all I get is the click from the relay switch and battery is still holding.


My next thought is that the starter is bad however when I had the stator cover off I would remove the idle gear thing and I even went to go start it with the cover off and gear removed and the starter gear would spin.


I can get the motor to turn over once then it stops and clicks. So either the battery is shot or the starter motor is shot or maybe both.


What say all of you?

I'm not going to be much help but I am glad you made it out without injury! Sounds like a crazy ride.

12.4v seems low, clicking noise usually indicate low battery voltage, have you tried hooking up to another battery or a jumper pack for staring?

Could you try to bump/ push start it? As long as the engine is turning over freely and you do have some power this would at least by pass the starter motor.

Another thought is to double check the battery terminals and make sure they are clean and tight.

Checked connections and grounds. All are good. Went through entire electrical system and made sure all connectors were not bad. Got it narrowed down so far to either battery or starter so far. Unless something else is wrong that I can't see. Not the best with electrical but forums and YouTube helps a lot.

Tried to bump start it but I can't get it. No hill where I live and my legs and knees aren't healed enough to run next to it to bump start it. Driveway isn't steep enough either, that's what I was trying.

Whoa, how far was the drop to the river? Glad you survived that ok.

so its been forever since ive been on here. To answer the last question... the fall was about 20 feet into about 5 feet of water.

So..... after many days of looking on the interwebs I started to take apart my bike. I didnt drop the engine but did take off the head and the oil pan. After looking a bit i saw that I had broke a connecting rod on cylinder #2. The connecting rod did scrape up the inside of the case a bit but nothing too bad.

In the last week I put in a new cylinder and connecting rod, put the head back on and checked timing, manually turned motor a few times to check it again. Put the engine back together, put the wiring harness back in and today I finished putting her all back together. Inbetween this last week and after the crash while taking it apart i cleaned all the injectors, the tank, pretty much everything.

Added fuel, oil, filters, coolent, charged battery and turn the key....... everything looks good, no error codes, go to start and blow a couple fuses :(

had to go into work so havent been able to figure it out yet.

My sympathies man! I know how you feel. Post when you get her to fire up. Best of luck to you.

update: reason fuses were blowing was because I had two connectors plugged into the wrong one.


once I had that right it fired up. Rode it around for a test drive and it was overheating, had a very loud tapping and was running rough. tested out the fan motor and found it was dead, bought a new one. took the thermostat out and put it into hot water with a candy thermometer to check when it opens and its good.


The loud tapping and rough ride was due to an exhaust valve that came lose. once I got that back together it started back up. Took it for another test ride and everything was doing good. Next day went for another ride and went to open her up and something broke inside. Under 8000 rpm she was good, once I got above that, that's when something went wrong.


Took her apart again and found out my timing was off by just a little bit. which wasn't so bad below 8k RPM. Anyway, it broke another connecting rod in a different cylinder.


Fixed all that, made sure, very sure this time that my timing was dead on. She runs and is doing good so far. Yesterday was my first test run after the last fix. Running smooth and not overheating, no loud tapping or any other weird noises. just rode her around the block real quick and while idling got it up to 11k RPM and nothing but the beautiful sound of a bike at high RPMs.


Only issue I have now is that my gauge cluster isn't working properly. Cant tell what time it is, speed, temp, it just looks weird. almost like it says 7t.
I remember finding the fix for that somewhere just cant remember where it was. anyone on here know? Its similar to this guys issue here on youtube.


oh yeah, and my headlight wont turn on. The bulbs are good, when I run a jumper to the battery they light up. Took apart the headlight switch and cleaned all connections, even traced some wires to make sure the wire wasn't exposed anywhere. I also replaced the headlight relay but that didn't fix it. Might have gotten a bad relay. Tried to find out how to test the relay to see if its good but couldn't find what ohm resistance its supposed to have.

Fixed
 

I bypassed the power commander and bam it started. Even though the lights were on, on power commander it wasn’t sending power to the injectors.