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Message started by eilatan on 08/16/10 at 19:56:48

Title: Trouble starting 87 savage
Post by eilatan on 08/16/10 at 19:56:48

Hey all,

Having a little trouble starting this bike after sitting for a while. Usually in the spring I charge up the battery a bit and away it goes. This year not so much. Figured it was just a low battery that since I haven't ridden lately never got charged enough from riding.

Anyway, this is what I've done so far. With test light, getting current at black wire on coil, and when trying to start, get current on orange wire, but only when trying to start. No current is coming down the plug boot wire at any time. Swapped out two different coils from another bike (not same year/model) and get the same result. Borrowed known good battery same thing.

Gas seems to be getting through fine, as needed to empty out float bowl from possible flooding once. I've read a few posts here and DL'd a clymer's manual and read about a pickup coil and ignitor that may be the problem. I'm getting confused if the pickup coil is part of the CDI or alternator/stator though. Have no idea where the ignitor is too.

I'm gonna pick up a digital MM tomorrow. Was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of what to check and/or what I should be getting. I'm not electrically inclined at all. I'm real good at taking things apart and learn as I go. Plus I'm a girl :)

Title: Re: Trouble starting 87 savage
Post by verslagen1 on 08/16/10 at 20:04:06

well 1st off, don't think it's electrical.

I'd clean the carb 1st, either take it off and do it right or be lazy and drain the carb then fill it back up with seafoam, let it sit overnite, then drain it again and fill up with fresh gas.

Title: Re: Trouble starting 87 savage
Post by verslagen1 on 08/16/10 at 20:09:07

but a volt meter is a good thing to have.
does the motor turn over ok?
with a volt meter you'll be able to check the voltage as it turns.
if it drops to 10 v it won't start and if you've charged it already then you have a bad battery.

Title: Re: Trouble starting 87 savage
Post by eilatan on 08/16/10 at 20:19:10

Hey, wow, thanks for the quick reply. About a month ago I drained all the gas, put some in and added seafoam. Let it run a while, around the block or two, but never got really got a huge amount of white smoke. I've done this on cars, but directly in via vaccum, and gotten way more smoke before.

What makes me think it's electrical is that shouldn't my tester light up on the plug wire when trying to start it? I don't understand why black has constant light when bike turned on, but orange only has a light when trying to start. I'm thinking that current is getting in and out the coil (and I've used 3), but not coming down the plug wire. Am I understanding this wrong? I didn't pull the plug, cause that would mean taking off tank, when I thought I could see if plug was getting a spark off the plug wire.

Title: Re: Trouble starting 87 savage
Post by eilatan on 08/16/10 at 20:22:53

Sorry, missed your message about the MM. My battery was dropping to 9 when trying to start, but at 13 otherwise. My neighbor put his good battery in. His stayed above 12 when starting. I got a new battery tonight and it's charging. While I used his MM for prior test, figured it would be good to get my own. Not sure how to do all the tests on them though, but hopefully it comes with a good manual.

Title: Re: Trouble starting 87 savage
Post by verslagen1 on 08/16/10 at 20:25:10

seafoam don't burn to well that's why it clouded up on your car.

I'm not the electrical guru, but i think the coil has electricity to it all the time, and discharges thru the orange wire to spark. would be easier to check with the plug and checking spark.

Title: Re: Trouble starting 87 savage
Post by eilatan on 08/16/10 at 20:41:08

I'll get the MM tomorrow and also check to see if there's spark on the plug. Just don't understand why spark would be there if there's not current coming to the test light down the plug wire. If orange is last stop till spark on plug, does that mean the pickup coil and/or ignitor would be okay? I looked at the wiring diagram but can't figure out the directions for in and out on stuff.

Thanks for your help and suggestions tonight. I'm calling it a night and will have a go at it tomorrow. :)

Title: Re: Trouble starting 87 savage
Post by verslagen1 on 08/16/10 at 20:54:08

I'm pretty sure it operates backwards to the way cars used to operate.
it grounds the coil to cause spark. I would'nt go to far into it with out checking the spark first, and you may need a new sparkplug.

Title: Re: Trouble starting 87 savage
Post by Hashbrown on 08/16/10 at 23:00:49

7874717C697C731D0 wrote:

Hey, wow, thanks for the quick reply. About a month ago I drained all the gas, put some in and added seafoam.

first off that is sooo hot when a girl displays her technical expertise on a motorcycle. ;)

second, dont be surprised if bill67 proposes to u. i think a girl using seafoam is just about the pinnacle of his fantasies... :D

Title: Re: Trouble starting 87 savage
Post by Charon on 08/17/10 at 08:25:52

I'm sure you are not the only one who has problems with electrical stuff. Ths Savage does not have a Capacitive Discharge Ignition (CDI) system. It has a transistorized system. The box which controls the ignition is called the "ignitor" in the Clymer book. According to Clymer, the coil has power supplied via the orange wire at all times when the ignition is on. This current comes through the engine stop switch on the handlebar and through the sidestand relay. The black wire goes to the ignitor. The ignitor switches the coil on or off, in just exactly the same way as points switched coils on older machines.

The pickup coil is mounted inside the stator cover. Whenever a magnet mounted on the rotor (what I would have called a flywheel) passes the pickup coil it induces a pulse, which is wired to the ignitor. The ignitor receives the pulse, mulls things over, then switches the coil to make a spark. No current comes down the plug boot wire until the ignitor calls for a spark, and then the current is quite small (but the voltage is quite high).

If you aren't getting 12 volts on the orange wire at the coil when the ignition is on, you need to start backtracking to find out what happened. By the way, it looks as if it might be an orange wire with a white tracer on it. Make sure the stop switch on the right handlebar isn't off. Try it with the sidestand up. I don't advise riding with the sidestand switch bypassed, but you can easily bypass it for troubleshooting.

Let us know what happens.

Title: Re: Trouble starting 87 savage
Post by dasch on 08/17/10 at 09:12:45

With Charon. Orange on coil is hot whenever ignition is on and all safety systems work properly.
CDI connects and disconnects coil's GROUND to fire a spark. You should have battery voltage on orange on coil all the time if, repeat IF safety systems work and all safety requirements are met.

Title: Re: Trouble starting 87 savage
Post by eilatan on 08/17/10 at 14:34:07

Okay, I'm armed with a new DMM and after finding some food, with the help of chapter 8, electrical of the clymer manual, I'll come up with some numbers for various things. I'm really starting to think it might be the starter motor. One of the times I was trying to start it, while my old battery was low, I had the charger on "engine assist" and think it might have fried the starter motor. Sound plausible? Any any idea where to get maybe a used one? Didn't see any on ebay, and new is $300+.

Btw, what's the $$ ratio on selling bike running versus parting it out? I'm not likely to put another 300 into it. It's very clean, 1765 original miles and has custom paint and new seats.

Title: Re: Trouble starting 87 savage
Post by verslagen1 on 08/17/10 at 16:49:08

saw starter rebuild kits not to long ago, maybe fleabay.

Take the starter out, touch the housing to ground of a battery and touch the post to positive. should whirl up a storm.

Now that we are talking about the starter, there are a couple of issues... Did you ever have the stator cover off? if yes, there's a washer that usually gets put back on the wrong shaft.

Also, there's a know problem with the starter on pre88 models. The starter can jam when the motor rotates backward on shutdown and break the mounts for the starter.

Title: Re: Trouble starting 87 savage
Post by Charon on 08/17/10 at 17:02:39

I get nasty vibes from a battery charger on "engine assist." I would be very suspicious that the charger put out considerably higher voltage than the normal battery voltage. I would suspect, if it did, the high voltage could have fried the ignitor module, the voltage regulator, and the decompression controller. I would check the output voltage of that battery charger on "engine assist" using that new DMM. If it puts out more than, say, 16 volts (a guess) it might have killed all the solid-state electronics on the bike.

Title: Re: Trouble starting 87 savage
Post by eilatan on 08/18/10 at 08:17:50

Well, call me stupid. Neighbor came over and after trying to start it said it wasn't electrical. Ended up emptying tank again, took off carb and cleaned it out. There was water and rust sitting in the float bowl. After putting all back together started like a champ. When I cleaned out tank before, didn't mess with the carb...mea culpa. Now gotta put back the original coil, got a ninja coil on it now.

Thanks all for the learning experience and giving me suggestions on what was wrong. Really thought it was electical since when it was starting it was slow to start and battery was low, thought something fried using the 'engine assist' on the charger.

Title: Re: Trouble starting 87 savage
Post by Charon on 08/18/10 at 08:56:34

Good to hear you got it going, and good to hear the battery charger didn't cook anything. I'm not too surprised to hear the Sea Foam didn't work, either.