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1997 R1100RT Gremlin - what to do....?

How - First, it directly affects engine vacuum; second, if there were bits in the hoses, there were probably bits (or at least dust) in the idle air passageways. Clogged canisters also may become gas-soaked inside, completely negating their intended purpose.
 
And one of the next questions is.. How can the charcoal canister become gas soaked? One way is if the vent hose in the tank develops a leak. If that happens, liquid fuel can enter the vent hose and make its way to the canister. fuel soaked charcoal can cake against the felt filters that are meant to contain the charcoal powder and once clogged, the fuel tank can no longer vent either way. Once the fuel level drops sufficiently, you start to draw a vacuum in the tank. This vacuum impacts not only the pump inlet, but also the fuel return and the pressure regulator it connects to. Between the vacuum making it harder for the pump to do its job on one side and making the regulator open prematurely on the other end, fuel pressure at the injectors can be insufficient for the engine to run.

Charcoal making its way past the felt filters in the canister and migrating into the throttle bodies is also possible once the canister is contaminated with liquid fuel. This is messy and annoying and introduces extra carbon to the valves and combustion chamber, but shouldn't cause the engine to stop running unless it was extremely excessive and contributed to fouled spark plugs.

The point of this rambling post is that if you have this issue and perform a canisterectomy, you may start seeing seeing fuel dripping on the ground under your bike or smell gas fumes around it. If so, be ready to pull the tank and replace the hoses. If it like my bike , it may only happen when the tank is full if the crack forms up near near the neck.
 
Oh no!!!

Well, the saga (quest) continues.....

Sitting on it, ready to pull out to head for work this morning, and....stopped cold. Would NOT restart.

RID display up, engine turning over, fiddled with the side-stand.....nada.
I cranked and could get a gas smell (first time for that, I suspect due to the canisterectomy??).

With a HEAVY HEART I wheeled her back into the garage and took the pickup to work. Aye yi yi will I be the brunt of shop haranguing.... You know it, "shoulda dumped it", "BMW = money pit", "dumb-a#-". Oh well....

Will call the dealership she just left from later and post again in this thread.

rjljr
 
RJLJR, Debugging this kind of problem can be very hard. If it were my bike (understand the bonding thing) I would wire three LEDs (ones with resistors so you can connect them to 12V) to the following spots:

#1 +12V input to the Motronic and Fuel Pump Relay control coils (it's a green/yellow) wire
#2 Output of the Fuel Pump relay contact
#3 Output of the Motronic relay contact

Line the LEDs up in a row somewhere where you can glance down and see them.

With key off, all LEDs should be off.
With key on, bike not running, Motronic should be on. Fuel pump should come on for two seconds.
With bike running, all LEDs s should be on.

Then when you're riding, if you get a cut out, immediately look to see which LED has gone out.
RB

Rjljr, As I wrote earlier, this problem can be found but you need someone to wire the LEDs or do the equivalent with a DVM. The approach is to find which circuit is not live when the bike won't start. You've got to go at this like a detective, looking for concrete clues. You can see where the shotgun approach has gotten you: lots of replacement parts but no closer to a solution.

I don't think the dealership is going to find this. You need to not move it when it won't start and figure out what exact thing is wrong, for example:

--does the fuel pump run for 2 seconds when you turn the key on?

--is there power at the ignition coil when the key is on?

--if you replace the fuel pump relay and/or Motronic relay with simple jumpers, does the bike start?

Etc, etc. ...

Rereading your initial report, it does sound like a wire was damaged during the clutch removal. But if you can, through detective work, determine that all the electrical signals are good when it won't start, then we could look at the fuel side.

I recommend you do the detective work yourself. Buy a DVM and build two jumper wires with spade terminals to use as relay replacements. Also, you might want to buy a whole set of fuses, once in a while a fuse is intermittent.
 
Great suggestions.

roger 04 rt,
I appreciate your comments and your common sense and agree with your assessment.

I did put a call into the dealership to see what they might suggest, haven't heard back.

But, summer is here, I can put the pick up outside and leave that stall clear to start the detective work.

I will keep adding to the thread as things transpire.

Thanks to ALL for all of the interest.

rjljr
 
Back to the basics.

Any engine, all engines need the same very few things to run. Ask yourself these few simple questions;
Do I have good compression? Healthy engine?
Spark? At the right time?
Fuel, pressure and flow?
Are my cylinders getting fuel, at the right time?
I did check the air filter? Cranks over at least 70 RPM?
I know my grounds are good but I should check them again.
Fuses look good but do I know they are capable of passing current?

It takes me about ten minutes to determine if an engine that doesn't start has what it needs. It has taken me a very long time to find out what the problem is when it's intermittent at times. Regardless, I always go back to the beginning and sometimes confirm everything all over again until I find the piece that is missing.
 
Intermittencies

hello rjljr,

Here are the main intermittencies that plagued my '02 R1150RT and may be relevant to your R1100RT:

-dirty contact in fuel tank connector:
Even after cleaning it several times, this caused intermittent failure to start and at least once stopped the bike while on the open road while running great. A side effect can be loss of fuel gauge indication on RID, if the dirty contact happens to be the ground. This common failure point would not be detected by Roger04RT's otherwise excellent LED that checks the Fuel Pump Relay output for +12V. The connector is mounted just below the right rear of the fuel tank. I don't think this is your problem, but it's worth checking for dirt, grease and corrosion inside.

-Ignition switch wiring:
Find the small wire harness coming out of the switch at the bottom of the key cylinder. Try wiggling the harness and the switch itself right where the wire comes out when you have the next no-start condition. Also try turning the handlebars. There are 2 failure modes: wire breakage where the zip-ties on the harness are too tight, and switch failure due to moisture and corrosion (my case). The switch is a small plastic pill box retained in the cylinder by a tiny set screw hidden on the right side.

-intermittent fuel pump relay
swap it out, or swap with the horn relay which is just as good. (Hard to prove this was the gremlin unless you luckily wind up with an intermittent horn). Probably your dealer has already replaced it for good luck.

-Motronic Relay pops up:
This stopped my bike on the highway and also caused no starts. Fix: push Motronic Relay back down into its socket. Mine seems to have vibrated up over time, and once noticeably after I hit a speed bump at speed. Has happened to me 2 or 3 times but I have never heard anyone else confirm it.

-Intermittent coil:
Check for good spark both sides on next no-start. Not likely since you don't mention wet weather when problem occurs. You will note from the schematic that both plugs fire together.

-Intermittent HES (Hall Effect Sensor):
As GSAddict says, it was a good investment to replace it as the original ones were doomed to fail while riding home in the rain. In the tiny chance the new one is flukey, at the next no-start verify you have good spark and remove one fuel injector to observe good spray pattern (carefully).

-Loose ground wire:
I'm doubting this since you imply the bike runs great and has never quit while riding. Loose battery ground would blank your RID display, which you don't report, but of course start by insuring clean and tight battery terminals. The main engine ground on top of the transmission is suspect since it was undone/redone during the clutch job, and it's devilishly hard to find and tighten under the battery box (on the R1150RT anyway). I doubt it's a problem as it would likely kill the bike occasionally while riding, which you don't report. A loose ground on the alternator would not cause your problem. There are not that many other grounds to look for, most of the control devices have their grounds running back to the ECU, and your problem persists with old and new ECU.

The fact that your bike runs great when it runs indicates this is not a slow degrading or fluid clogging, it's an on/off problem.

The ignition switch wiring correlates best with the symptoms. Probably easy to check since you could induce the problem by wiggle testing during starting.
 
Update - 7/6/2016

There have been a lot of views to this thread so I thought that I should update where it left off.....

After bringing the bike back from latest dealership visit that we (they) thought that the problem was solved with removing the charcoal canister, the same symptoms persists....runs like a champ until....it doesn't. Called the dealership, they said, bring it back and they will get it straightened out.

Well, I decided to install the LED's as explained in this thread. Did that and when I started the bike, a NEW symptom appeared. The bike was running rough, surging, popping and coughing. I decided that I did something wrong that threw the timing off (one of the LEDs to the motronic or coil signal or....?

So... after a long delay due to some distractions, went back in and removed ALL of the LED's from the circuits and....bike is still popping, surging, running rough. Ahem....

So, I will take it back (again) to the dealership and hope that they don't throw their hands up in the air since it has been "altered" and see if they can get it right this time around.

Happy summer....
rjljr

Meanwhile, the Yamaha runs great and all I do to that is change oil and air tires.
 
Did you take the tank off or do anything else that may have caused you to dislodge a throttle cable? It is easy to pull the conduit out of the adjustment ferrule at one of the throttle bodies (the right one in most cases) and get it to seat on top of the ferrule instead of in it.

If I read your post correctly, the original issue still exists as well. If the dealer can't figure it out, I'll have time and garage space available at the end of the month.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Update - 8/30/2016 - Maybe final!!??

Picked up the bike yesterday.

The "rough running" and popping was EXACTLY what rxcrider noted in his reply. The throttle cable WAS dislodged and dropped it back in place and corrected the issue. (I should have been checking the thread more often!!)

The final issue seems to have been EXACTLY what Doug Raymond mentioned in his reply:
"-Ignition switch wiring:
Find the small wire harness coming out of the switch at the bottom of the key cylinder. Try wiggling the harness and the switch itself right where the wire comes out when you have the next no-start condition. Also try turning the handlebars. There are 2 failure modes: wire breakage where the zip-ties on the harness are too tight, and switch failure due to moisture and corrosion (my case). The switch is a small plastic pill box retained in the cylinder by a tiny set screw hidden on the right side."

While searching for a cause for failure (of course, the bike was NOT in failure mode when i got it to the dealership) the mechanic got it to cut in and out when messing with the ignition switch. (I had done a lot of wiggling there to no avail.) He said it just didn't "feel right" and noted that the contacts were corroded. Replaced it with new and, i put around 200 miles on it yesterday....none sign of the problem that started this.

May have been the "Gremlin"!!?? I am hoping so.

You got to love this group. There is a such wealth of brain power in this "collective". I am amazed (well, not anymore) at all of the suggestions and, by the fact that they nailed it.

Many, many thanks to all that took the time to contribute their knowledge and experience. Maybe this will come in handy for another with similar.
 
Saga continues.....

Failed on the way home from work. Rolled to the side of the road.
Wouldn't start.
I cycled through on/off on ignition, kill switch, side stand up and down.
Gave her another go and presto.
Started.
Cut short my joy ride home from work. Got it in the garage, jiggled wires to see if I could get it to fail. Nope.
Geez....square 1, again?

This morning:
Decided to take it to work this morning so that if it happened again I could be more systematic in the process of getting it re-started.

Started right up. Got to work and realized that I forgot my work phone so I started it back up and headed off. While sitting at a light, kaput, stopped. RID still up, all lights normal, would turn over, could hear fuel pump kicking in....nothing.

Pushed it off the road to a parking lot and since I DIDN'T have the phone, was hoping that someone coming in to work would pass and save me.

Meanwhile, started through the cycle.
Kill switch on/off. No change.
Ignition switch on/off. No change.
Side stand up/down. No change though I did notice that when the stand goes down, the RID goes off, comes back up when the stand comes up.
Won't fire up.

Was giving up and decided to hit it one more time. Started.
As I was about to pull out, stalled, again.
Hit the starter, started.

Decided to shoot for work since it was closer than home. Shot to work, one little cough but made it all the way. Put it on center stand running, jiggled and jiggled and jiggled. Won't fail!!??

Talk about losing faith.

Any suggestions. Think I should try dealership....again or.....?

"Befuddled"
 
On review your troubles all started after the clutch job. The dealer had to take the back end of the bike off or lift parts of it out of the way and connect/disconnect or disturb several connectors when they do the clutch job. This really sounds like a bad connection and if the area under the seat of an R1100RT is the same or similar to the R1100R ( I had one) there are many areas that could be the problem. Get a good electrical contact cleaner and go through the various connections, one at a time. Don't use dielectric grease on the connections after you are done as it is designed to keep moisture out not ensure a good contact on the connectors themselves.

Process goes something like this. Take one connector, pull the connector apart, spray some cleaner, push the connector together, pull apart and then reconnect. Disconnect the battery when you are doing this to prevent any mishaps.

Best of luck as electrical gremlins can be a nightmare to solve and if you have a manual, and the aptitude you can do the above yourself. A knowledgeable friend never hurts either.
 
Failed on the way home from work. Rolled to the side of the road.
Wouldn't start.
I cycled through on/off on ignition, kill switch, side stand up and down.
............. later .................
While sitting at a light, kaput, stopped. RID still up, all lights normal, would turn over, could hear fuel pump kicking in....nothing.

Side stand up/down. No change though I did notice that when the stand goes down, the RID goes off, comes back up when the stand comes up. (RID off with side stand down is NORMAL. )
Won't fire up.

Was giving up and decided to hit it one more time. Started.
As I was about to pull out, stalled, again.
Hit the starter, started.
.............. more stuff .............
"Befuddled"

This sounds very similar to a coil failure that I experienced on my RT and a friend had on his RT. The R1100RT is a single centrally located coil - it is just below the forward tip of the gas tank behind the steering neck. The coil gets hot, fails, then when it cools down it runs. Used coils are available online. Not a hard swap and not very expensive. My friend was pulling his hair out. His RT would die like someone flipped the kill switch. All lights and instruments appeared normal but it would not restart. My RT would not restart after a gas stop following a long ride. Two hours later it started up and ran for 1/2 mile then it died again. Good used coils fixed the problems on both of our bikes.
 
Update - 10/10/2016

The last failure I had was the one that I posted on 08/17.
I confess that when I got it to work and parked it in the back garage, there is sat for a number of weeks.
I had a trip coming from NE Ohio to Gettysburg and have been wanting to do that on the bike (PA Turnpike to Breezewood, 30 into Gettysburg) but was afraid to take the BMW due to...well all of what we've been discussing. (A failure inside the tunnel on the PA turnpike is a worst nightmare.)
A good friend allowed me to take her ST1300 and it was a great ride, even with the rain all the way on the return.

In any case, it made me miss the BMW and I just said to hell with it I will drive it until it dies and (hopefully) stays dead and have been commuting on it several tanks, putting it through wet days/dry days/cold days, back-roads, highways, high speeds, idle speeds, and...no failure???!!!

The last mechanical/electrical thing that was done was the ignition switch and it RAN without a burp through a whole tank. I filled and, for the first time, over filled to the point that I could smell gas and it was running rough, and even "coughed up" a spume of gas. The next morning was when it failed. It sat for several weeks. I've been running it now (as I said above) for several tanks and no problem.

Could it have been the the ignition repair, ACTUALLY corrected the gremlin and the following stalls were due to the overfill that, once I ran down or had time to dry up, allows it to run w/o dilemma? Or, am I grasping at straws here??

Could that be it??
 
Assuming the carbon canister was removed "correctly", venting the tank to atmosphere behind the right peg (along with the filler neck water drain) and capping off the vacuum ports at the throttle bodies, overfilling the tank should have zero impact on how it runs.
 
Tahnks for the comment rxcrider

"Assuming the carbon canister was removed "correctly", venting the tank to atmosphere behind the right peg (along with the filler neck water drain) and capping off the vacuum ports at the throttle bodies, overfilling the tank should have zero impact on how it runs."

Thanks for the comment rxcrider. I am assuming it was done correctly. Dealership. What would have made it "cough up" a spume of fuel? Enough that it splattered up on the windscreen.

In any case, I guess I am riding on hope and, as in a movie I just saw, "hope is not a strategy".
 
Where did it "cough up" a spume of fuel from? I was assuming you meant that it vented fuel to the ground out of the hose, but that doesn't align well with "splattered up on the windscreen".

As I re-read your post on the most recent failure...

Failed on the way home from work. Rolled to the side of the road.
Wouldn't start.
I cycled through on/off on ignition, kill switch, side stand up and down.
Gave her another go and presto.
Started.
Cut short my joy ride home from work. Got it in the garage, jiggled wires to see if I could get it to fail. Nope.
Geez....square 1, again?

This morning:
Decided to take it to work this morning so that if it happened again I could be more systematic in the process of getting it re-started.

Started right up. Got to work and realized that I forgot my work phone so I started it back up and headed off. While sitting at a light, kaput, stopped. RID still up, all lights normal, would turn over, could hear fuel pump kicking in....nothing.

Pushed it off the road to a parking lot and since I DIDN'T have the phone, was hoping that someone coming in to work would pass and save me.

Meanwhile, started through the cycle.
Kill switch on/off. No change.
Ignition switch on/off. No change.
Side stand up/down. No change though I did notice that when the stand goes down, the RID goes off, comes back up when the stand comes up.
Won't fire up.

Was giving up and decided to hit it one more time. Started.
As I was about to pull out, stalled, again.
Hit the starter, started.

Decided to shoot for work since it was closer than home. Shot to work, one little cough but made it all the way. Put it on center stand running, jiggled and jiggled and jiggled. Won't fail!!??

I don't see mention of when you overfilled the tank, the fact that it ran rough right after that or when the fuel spume occurred.

After you overfilled the tank, did it run rough right away?

How long did you ride it before parking it after that fill up and did it run rough the entire time?

The next day, did it run rough on the way to or from work or did it run fine until it stalled?

How long was your ride to work?

How long was your joy ride home from work before it failed?

The next day when you rode it to work, did it run fine or rough? Did it run rough on your return trip for the phone before stalling at a stop light?

When did the fuel spume occur and where did it come from?

Do you have rubber caps on the ports on the bottom of the throttle bodies or are there still hoses attached?



_______________________________________

Based on the email,

Riding around with a gas cap that isn't fully closed could certainly explain how you ended up with fuel splashing out of the tank.

Assuming you had the fill nozzle inserted through the hole at the base of the fill neck, the automatic shutoff on the nozzle should have prevented overfilling. How high was the fuel in the fill neck after you stopped pumping and it settled?

Regardless, I'd really like to know how if the vacuum ports on the throttle bodies are capped off. If not, I'd be curious to see if something silly was done in terms of hooking up the hoses from the carbon canister such that excess fuel was being sucked into the intakes at times.
 
Last edited:
So I've ended up with the bike in my garage this summer to work my way through it and figure out the issue. I started by pulling the tank, installing fuel line quick disconnects to make my life easier and looking things over. I found found no problems with:
  • fuel pressure
  • wiring
  • tank venting
  • fuses
I then moved on to noid lights. I hooked up 12V LEDs as noid lights parallel to the fuel pump, left injector and ignition coil. The pulse from the light at the ignition coil was odd and occasionally very bright. I should have suspected something, but I disconnected the noid light ground from the ignition coil and ran it straight to B- so I could verify the 12V+ to the coil. I went for a few rides and had it stall on me a couple times, but never long enough to pull the right plug wire and hook up my spark gap tester without it firing up on the left cylinder when I thumbed the start button. None of the noid lights cut out ant any time, except the fuel injector during closed throttle coast down, as I believe it should. When I got home, I pulled off the left plug wire, installed the spark gap tester (6mm) and failed to get a spark, but it started on the right cylinder. Since these bikes fire through both plugs on the same coil, there should be a spark on both sides or none at all. I removed the left plug wire and verified that I was still getting a spark on the right side. At some point in this process, I fried the noid light hooked to the positive wire feeding the coil. I suspect the 6mm air gap was more than the coil could jump on the left side of the winding due to a smaller gap being present through a crack between the primary and secondary windings and my test just finished off the coil which was already failing intermittently. I pulled the coil and found continuity between the primary and secondary windings. I replaced the coil with one from a donor bike and installed a new noid light parallel to coil. This time it flashed consistantly, similar to the one on the left injector. I've put about 100 miles on it after the coil swap with no issues thus far. I'll update again once I've had it out for a nice long ride and it either runs nicely or fails again.
 
I installed the original Motronic and it ran fine with that as well, so I suspect this has been a coil issue from the onset. I Buttoned it back up and went for a nice, long, reasonably hard ride. 14 hours with a few stops along the way and 520 miles of some of my favorite twisty bits in Ohio; the bike ran flawlessly.

 
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