• Welcome, Guest! We hope you enjoy the excellent technical knowledge, event information and discussions that the BMW MOA forum provides. Some forum content will be hidden from you if you remain logged out. If you want to view all content, please click the 'Log in' button above and enter your BMW MOA username and password.

    If you are not an MOA member, why not take the time to join the club, so you can enjoy posting on the forum, the BMW Owners News magazine, and all of the discounts and benefits the BMW MOA offers?

Replaced Starter

arhd63

Member
Gentlemen,

Need your expertise input, replaced the starter on my 1995 R100RT today. Bike fired up when I first started, idled for a few minutes then everything went dead. Checked battery good at 12.5 volts had it on charger while I was replacing starter. Now all I have is a very faint oil light on dash coming on. Any ideas were I should go first for troubleshooting?

Thank you!
 
Check the easy stuff first. Terminals tight on the battery. Check the ground at the back of the transmission. Kill switch. Since you had the tank off as well as the top cover, be sure all the connections to the coil(s) under the tank are back in place. Something vibrated loose while the bike was idling.
 
The standing voltage of a good battery should be +13.1v. to around 13.4v.

12.5 is a bit low. I totally agree with checking and cleaning all connections.

"everything went dead" says dirty connections to me. a bad battery can do that as well. The first thing to confirm in electrical trouble shooting is a good battery that holds a charged static voltage as described above. Batteries are the first and most likely cause of troubles. It could be a battery going in to failure mode. The battery must be eliminated as a cause first. It could be more than just a failed battery. It might be that another cause has taken the battery to ruin. It is not un-common to have more than one problem when the bike , as a whole system, goes to un-reliable.

Load testing the battery would be my first test.

How many miles and how often does the bike get run, hard? Airheads in good function need to be run regularly and at high R.P.M.'s. My take is that the bike needs to be run at least once a week at revs above 3000 for at least 50 miles. Otherwise a person needs to use a battery tender of some sort.

" It's always the battery until it is proven to not be the battery".
 
Thank you, I will load test the battery this morning.

I replaced the battery, now when I hit the starter button get a couple of clicks, tach goes up to 4 grand, resets itself, then turn key to off position all dash lights work as suppose to, turn signals, horn all electrics fine. Any suggestions on where to go next? Electrical connections look solid, no corrosion bike has 53K on it. Sure do not want to take it to dealer. LOL
 
Last edited:
Back
Top