My wife and I went on a rush trip to Virginia this past weekend. The full story will be posted soon as it turned out to be a great trip. The not so great part was that we got stuck in several hours of bumper to bumper traffic Saturday in nearly 100 degree temps in Virginia. We had been doing this on I-95 which had turned into a parking lot, so we turned off onto Rt. 1 to see if we could do better. That worked for about a mile of slow speeds, then things ground to a halt. We were stuck in another parking lot. Crawling forward 20 feet at a time was taking it's toll on both of us, but we were handling it. We passed a couple Harleys pulled off to the side cooling off. I barely got finished explaining the air-cooled thing to my wife, and how we didn't have that problem, when I noticed my temperature climbing. Huh? ST's don't do this! I watched my gauge hit 4 bars for a while, then quickly flash to 5 bars. While being concerned about that I also noticed my neutral light starting to get dim. Uh oh. The cooling issue was ignored while I thought about the charging issue. I knew my battery was poor at best. I could rev the engine to charge it, but that would make the cooling issue worse.
I decided to try to reduce the strain by unplugging both headlights. While sitting in traffic, still seated on the bike (no place to pull over right then...and we were going up a steep hill) I attempted to reach down to unplug the headlights. No luck. Just then the bike stalled. Dead. Pushed the started button and as expected, nothing. I pushed it to the side of the road- which was about 10" of pavement and 12" of dirt.
I assessed the situation and finally had the ability to reason it out. What had happened was the battery got so low that the fans stopped working, causing the overheating issue. O.K., now what to do about it. We were still in bumper to bumper traffic, on a 2-lane one-way road with no turnoffs anywhere in sight. We had no idea how much further the hill went.
O.K., I had an idea. One my wife didn't like. I let the bike cool for a while which really didn't help a lot. While it was cooling I was able to get the headlights unplugged. After 45 minutes on the side of the road we got a car to hold up for a minute while we got the bike turned around. Remember this was a one-way road? Yea. My wife did too, and wasn't happy with this plan. Once the bike was facing the wrong way on the side of the one-way road I had my wife walk down the hill and hold up traffic. I pushed hard and hopped on...and on the 3rd time letting the clutch out it started!
With the headlights unplugged it charged up fairly quickly. I had one more dead battery during the trip because I left my GPS on during a dinner stop (yes, the Scorpion was THAT bad!) but we made it home fine.
I decided to try to reduce the strain by unplugging both headlights. While sitting in traffic, still seated on the bike (no place to pull over right then...and we were going up a steep hill) I attempted to reach down to unplug the headlights. No luck. Just then the bike stalled. Dead. Pushed the started button and as expected, nothing. I pushed it to the side of the road- which was about 10" of pavement and 12" of dirt.
I assessed the situation and finally had the ability to reason it out. What had happened was the battery got so low that the fans stopped working, causing the overheating issue. O.K., now what to do about it. We were still in bumper to bumper traffic, on a 2-lane one-way road with no turnoffs anywhere in sight. We had no idea how much further the hill went.
O.K., I had an idea. One my wife didn't like. I let the bike cool for a while which really didn't help a lot. While it was cooling I was able to get the headlights unplugged. After 45 minutes on the side of the road we got a car to hold up for a minute while we got the bike turned around. Remember this was a one-way road? Yea. My wife did too, and wasn't happy with this plan. Once the bike was facing the wrong way on the side of the one-way road I had my wife walk down the hill and hold up traffic. I pushed hard and hopped on...and on the 3rd time letting the clutch out it started!
With the headlights unplugged it charged up fairly quickly. I had one more dead battery during the trip because I left my GPS on during a dinner stop (yes, the Scorpion was THAT bad!) but we made it home fine.
