hey all, i recently parked on a slight slope for about 30 minutes, came out and brought it back to a flat surface and tried to start it but it had trouble cranking up. It would attempt to and die, and i had to keep pressing the e-start about 5 times before it got enough power to start. It has never had any problems before this, it's an 02 f4i 5.5k miles. It also restarts the Trip A/B counter and the clock after it has a successful start. And now everytime i start it it keeps doing the same thing, unless im out for a ride and turn it off for at most an hour then it'll start fine, but after a good rest about 8+ hours it's hard to start up.

 

battery?

 

Is it cranking normal speed? Cuz it'll reset the trips and clock if the battery is really low and you try cranking it. It's gotta be really low for that to happen though, almost to the point where it won't crank at all.

Otherwise, sound like an electrical gremlin. Everything else works fine? The 2 turn signal indicators aren't staying on? The headlights are at normal brightness? You could check the green ground wire in the connector between the main wire harness and the headlight harness.... that's a common problem spot for a poor connection. Might also want to pull your cluster off and take off the little black plate that covers the hole where the wires go into the back of the cluster. There's 2 small flat plugs that slide into the connectors on the circuit board... make sure those are fully seated

Other than that, I'm not sure what to tell you other than testing every sensor on the bike. A coolant temp sensor gone bad can sometimes cause cold start problems. But something like that would have nothing to do with the clock and trips resetting, so I'll bet you've got something else going on

 

The crank speed is really slow, it'll spark for a second then after another second try to crank again, whereas normal it would be a continuous spark, like one right after the other and eventually crank all the way up. I guess it could be the battery though, but how long do they usually last and when do you guys usually replace yours if at all? Yeah and everything else is fine after start up, oh ya during the slow cranking the cluster will dimly light on/off and eventually turn off if it fails to start even when the key is all the way on the "On" position. But i'll check the connections/wires. Thanks for the help guys.

 

Yea that's your batter d00d! Either try charging it up if you have a charger (see if it'll take a charge), or replace it and it'll start right up. BUT, you could have a charging sys problem as well that's causing the battery to be low. Or it could just be the batterys time. My original lasted 80,000 miles, which is pretty good, but there's really no set limit on how long they last. I've seen batteries go out several times withing several thousand miles, and seen some still good after 100k miles. Depends too on where you live... when I was down in south Florida the heat would kill batteries pretty fast.

So either charge or replace your battery, then check over your charging system (I think there's a tutorial on here... somewhere). Or if you don't want to do that, just ride it for awile and see if it goes dead, LOL

 

haha that's wat i DONT want to happen :P i guess i'll change the batt to be on the safe side. Never done this on a bike before, is this pretty simple and self-explanatory?

 

Yea it's easy... right under the seat. Two 10mm bolts hold the seat on in the back of the seat (pull back the padding and you'll see them), then the battery is right under the CDI box. There's probably gonna be a rubber strap going over the CDI box that's kind of a pain to get off, and an even bigger pain to get back on, but once you get that off pull up on the 2 little ***** on the cover and it'll be right there. 10mm or large phillips head to take the terminals off... neg first, then positive, and install in opposite order. Watch out for the little nut inside the battery terminals, that it doesn't fall out when you unscrew the cables and take the batt out. That's about it

 

Awesome, thanks a lot man. Will probably get this done tomorrow and hopefully it solves all my problems! oh ya and i admire the godly mileage on your bike :P

 

Not a prob my friend... glad I could be of assistance Hopefully that's all it is and not a charging issue... ugh


And thank you! That reminds me I gotta update my sig... up to 112k now... I've been slacking, lol