another cross country trip. this time broke

[Deleted member 10105]

man do

So you had a lot of fun?

man, don't get me started. I went to see about a friend's mental state. turns out she was loony as a goon. it was screaming and yelling for a week, including 2 days where she paced and crawled back and forth mumbling incoherently. when she started involving me in her paranoid paranoia I had to leave. she loses things all day and started accusing me of stealing it. so it was time to go.

bad thing is she sabotaged the bike the night before I left. good thing she's not good at it, I made it all the way home no problem.
but all the way back if I turned the steering head to the right about 3/4 of the way, it would kill all the power.
I got back to the house, and went to start it again, and it's dead but good, now. I noticed that she had cut through the black wire loom coming off the key switch, so I pulled the bottom off the key switch and a wire has come off, there was a little nugget of solder in there loose. I held the wire back where it goes, but no power at all. I think she grabbed some wires with needle nose pliers or something and broke the wire inside the insulation. some of the wires had strange kinks in them. the factory wouldn't do that when creating wiring harnesses.

I wonder if triumph sells key switches? I can maybe solder it back together and do some continuity tests on the wires, but a new switch wouldn't hurt.

 

[Deleted member 10105]

thanks for all the sentiments guys. it was a beautiful ride home, I'll tell you that. it got dark around pueblo, and sun came up around fort worth.

I'll let you know what happens with the key switch tomorrow. I'm gonna try and drill off the rivets holding it on.

 

[Dr.D]

man do


man, don't get me started. I went to see about a friend's mental state. turns out she was loony as a goon. it was screaming and yelling for a week, including 2 days where she paced and crawled back and forth mumbling incoherently. when she started involving me in her paranoid paranoia I had to leave. she loses things all day and started accusing me of stealing it. so it was time to go.

bad thing is she sabotaged the bike the night before I left. good thing she's not good at it, I made it all the way home no problem.
but all the way back if I turned the steering head to the right about 3/4 of the way, it would kill all the power.
I got back to the house, and went to start it again, and it's dead but good, now. I noticed that she had cut through the black wire loom coming off the key switch, so I pulled the bottom off the key switch and a wire has come off, there was a little nugget of solder in there loose. I held the wire back where it goes, but no power at all. I think she grabbed some wires with needle nose pliers or something and broke the wire inside the insulation. some of the wires had strange kinks in them. the factory wouldn't do that when creating wiring harnesses.

I wonder if triumph sells key switches? I can maybe solder it back together and do some continuity tests on the wires, but a new switch wouldn't hurt.

Wow that is terrible. My question was meant in sarcastic humor. With all the cold and long miles it just sounded like more of a chore than a pleasurable ride. Sorry about the friend and the bike.

 

[Ishrub]

thanks for all the sentiments guys. it was a beautiful ride home, I'll tell you that. it got dark around pueblo, and sun came up around fort worth.

I'll let you know what happens with the key switch tomorrow. I'm gonna try and drill off the rivets holding it on.

Read the threads here on relocating it for advice on removal without destroying it and other threads here on the common ignition lock issues and fixes.

New lock sets are available but well out of your price range even from wreckers you are likely to face $100 or so.

 

[Ygransom]

early Rockets sent too much current thru the ignition switch and the white wire would fail. You can remove the switch and resolder it - but it will happen again. There was a recall to install a relay and take the load off the switch or @DEcosse makes a digital keyless switch to replace it.

 

[Steel]

Or @idk has a lot of helpful stuff including instructions on a keyless ignition that's about $30

Index of /r3docs

 

[Deleted member 10105]

Wow that is terrible. My question was meant in sarcastic humor. With all the cold and long miles it just sounded like more of a chore than a pleasurable ride. Sorry about the friend and the bike.

yeah, I know. but I had to tell somebody. I can get another friend and fix the bike. I'm not too worried about either.

 

[Idaho Red Rocket 3]

Kind of sad about your friend. You are a gentleman for going all that way to help. Is there someone in Casper that can look after her ?

 

[Deleted member 10105]

she's married. but husband works in oil field, 2 weeks on and off. I told her she needs to go to church and make friends there.

anyway, enough about that. I tried to drill off the rivets today, and they are not rivets. they are security screws with a head that breaks off after torquing. it looks like a rivet though. I went at it with a 1/4" drill bit and the drill bit unscrewed the bolt enough for me to finish it with my fingers. afterwards, I ground down the 'rivet' head and used a hacksaw to make a slot in it.

now it's remounted just fine. while it was apart I found that the white wire carrying all that current had got hot enough so that the little 'button' that it was soldered to inside the switch had gotten hot enough to imbed itself a little deeper in the plastic housing that holds it. it was a little too deep to make contact. so I messed with it, got it sitting up a little higher and resoldered the wire. don't think it will last for very long.

I can make a separate switch to connect the white wire to the brown and orange, the key will still do the rest.

 

[Joesmoe]

@james dean -

I repeat the information maintained by @idk - link provided again here: IDK's $30 keyless ignition load bypass

While you are welcome to reinvent the wheel, following someone else's footsteps can be helpful later, if you're requesting troubleshooting help, and you're able to report back, "Oh, I installed 'IDK's ignition bypass" - that would be immediately recognizable as a known configuration to take into account.