You make a valid point, the tail light and brake can probably be dispensed with for consideration but I would like to ensure I can see the road ahead so having ability to get a dip beam onto the road with a simple bypass would be beneficial. No running lights as standard over here but that might be an option if the forward running lights could be made powerful enough
"Get me home switch" - list of bypasses
- Thread starter aSTerix
- Start date
Yes I agree , its a very good way to learn about the fundamentals of how things work. I teach in my spare time at a Makerspace and the ST1100 is proving a wonderful tool for exploring electrical and mechanical stuff, the kids love it.
What I do is take a real world scenario that they can relate to and use that to drive their thinking and discovery.
If you can assist with this it would be much appreciated
I had forgotten about that movie, when I looked it up it reminded me of the story about Richard Feynman who was called in after 3 mile island and was looking at a supposedly failsafe schematic.
After a while he realised he had left it too long to ask what the symbols meant so instead he put his finger on a symbol and says "what happens if this valve fails" , assuming they would point out if it wasn't a valve !! The engineers then went away in a huddle until a gasp was heard and they returned and said , your right it isnt failsafe we need to modify.
This is an emergency situation, you were talking about limping to safety. Any light would do in this case - even a flashlight taped to the fairing. Should the alternator blow, you will have limited power reserves so why waste it on a headlight. You can reduce your speed to a few hundreths of a mach number. If this is an emergency, KISS - keep it simple.
A few years ago (before WWII, I think), my father and his brother drove from New York to California in Dad's Model A. About halfway across, the generator died and they drove at night on the battery. In order to see, Lenny, as the story goes, perched on the running board with a hand held flashlight to illuminate the road as my Father drove. No reason why you cannot do something similar with duct tape and a good flashlight every 10 years or so.
Not that I've heard here. My 1300 has two fans, anyway. (See joke below.) A more likely failure is the thermostat - I think I have read only one post about someone replacing the coolant temp sensor on the back of the 'stat housing but quite a few posts about thermostats dying (say a 5 year life sounds good, like most batteries though most folks seem to get more years than that).
A mathematician had to give a paper in a foreign country, and being fearful of a terrorist attack on his commercial flight, he did a statistical analysis of the probability of there being a bomb aboard. The numbers were not reassuring. He now travels comfortably with his own bomb, since his calculations showed that the probability of there being two bombs aboard any one plane were nearly zero.
This is a really good way of looking at it, I'm now exploring such options , also gives emergency lighting if I have to work at the roadside
Shawn K
Professional Cat Confuser
In this hypothetical emergency scenario, why not just pull a few fuses? Wouldn't that be less potentially problematic than a wholesale redesign of the bike's entire electrical system?
Of course, but its not going to be as much fun.
Shawn K
Professional Cat Confuser
I'm not trying to be difficult, I just don't accept the premise of what you're trying to do.
It seems like you're defaulting to a mindset that the only solution to your hypothetical emergency scenario is a complicated solution (a wholesale redesign / modification of the bike's entire electrical system). I think the better approach to accomplish your wishes would be to understand what fuses control what functions, and simply remove them. After all, the goal is to disable things, right? And by doing it this way, all you need to do later is... put the fuses back in.
Functions disabled, stock wiring, no new potential failure points. That seems to tick all the boxes from where I sit.
thats understood, no need to contribute if you prefer not to.
I wonder if that's why the dealer pulled them from both my ST1100's when they belonged to the Police. I have since put them back in. I'll need to look but I'm guessing they fail in such a way that the coolant doesn't go through the radiator, mmmmmh interesting one . I'll feed that back to my Makerplace class and see what they come up with
get a satellite phone or spot or
Thats an excellent suggestion, I ended up buying an Inreach and taking out the International rescue insurance.
The vacuum valve by bypass is simply taking the valve out . As long as the bike is moving the cooling fan is not needed. If you know that the fan is out , by watching the temp gauge and not feeling the heat blowing on your legs, just turn off the bike as your coming to a stop. Restart as your ready to go. And then there is a thing called Murphys Law, so what ever you didn't think of will happenI was going to run a parallel fuel line connected into the existing fuelline with a T valve (see photo below) . The parallel line would have a fuel flter & pump then connect back into the fuel line after the vacuum cut off valve . The pump would be supplied directly with its own 12v switched supply to bypass the posisble FCOR malfunction
This was actually the first bypass I thought about, having had on separate occasions the vacuum valve go and the fuel pump go , both whilst out riding.
The challenge with this one is getting the parallel components shoe-horned into the available space and having the bypass valve accessible
I have my tank on the bench and have also been contemplating connecting an additional feed line for an auxiliary fuel tank (as being discussed in another thread that is runnig at the moment) and if I do this, it will be a better place to connect the parallel fuel line.
'Stats fail in all modes, i.e. stuck open, stuck closed, and even part way open. Mine took forever to warm up (sticking open), and then the bike overheated on a ride (sticking closed). It's hard to predict which way your 'stat will fail.
ST Gui
240Robert
I wish there were a pay-as-you-go/prepaid sat phone plan. Buy a 100 minutes and use them or don't.
more like this in reality , its the Police spec harness, now on a pin board ready for labelling then will be opened and modified. The teenagers love doing this analogue stuff, it makes a nice change from hacking CANBUS but I am getting a lot of requests to integrate a digital bus system and have a hybrid. We will see !!
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The class have simplified the list as follows:
Mechanical
Bypass - Fuel pump/filter/vacuum cutoff. This takes care of a multitude of known failures (including vacuum bypass mentioned by @paulcb )
Electrical
Bypass all switched earth protection with one relay contactor
Bypass all switched 12v protection with one relay contactor (includes Ignition switch fail mentioned by @jrp ) (this needs to be hidden seeing as it overides the need for a key !!)
Separate feed for Facet fuel pump in mechanical bypass
Add voltmeter and adjustable voltage sense feed to alternator, double as both bypass and voltage output control
Separate LED running light front and rear that acts as bypass, have function normally and can be used to see at roadside (thanks to @SMSW for the input on this)
Separate switch for radiator fan that doubles as both bypass and manual operation
There is some discussion about using an m-unit for the above (thanks to @merv shepherd for steer to this unit in another post) because it also gives a starter supply bypass and of course there was a lot of suggestion about putting in a CANBUS in parallel but thats the nature of teenagers, go digital regardless
special thanks to @SMSW for the stuck thermostat input, that has sparked a lot of class discussion and some very creative bypass theories, will be interesting to see where they take this one
Appreciate all the people who gave input
Still open for any further suggestions
PS I use a technique for teaching thats called 'immersive socratic', fancy name for creating a scenario that the students can relate to and then having them work out the solution, its immensely effective because it always starts with a story (and usually a joke) and ends with bult in 'homework' that everyone is happy to do !
Mechanical
Bypass - Fuel pump/filter/vacuum cutoff. This takes care of a multitude of known failures (including vacuum bypass mentioned by @paulcb )
Electrical
Bypass all switched earth protection with one relay contactor
Bypass all switched 12v protection with one relay contactor (includes Ignition switch fail mentioned by @jrp ) (this needs to be hidden seeing as it overides the need for a key !!)
Separate feed for Facet fuel pump in mechanical bypass
Add voltmeter and adjustable voltage sense feed to alternator, double as both bypass and voltage output control
Separate LED running light front and rear that acts as bypass, have function normally and can be used to see at roadside (thanks to @SMSW for the input on this)
Separate switch for radiator fan that doubles as both bypass and manual operation
There is some discussion about using an m-unit for the above (thanks to @merv shepherd for steer to this unit in another post) because it also gives a starter supply bypass and of course there was a lot of suggestion about putting in a CANBUS in parallel but thats the nature of teenagers, go digital regardless
special thanks to @SMSW for the stuck thermostat input, that has sparked a lot of class discussion and some very creative bypass theories, will be interesting to see where they take this one
Appreciate all the people who gave input
Still open for any further suggestions
PS I use a technique for teaching thats called 'immersive socratic', fancy name for creating a scenario that the students can relate to and then having them work out the solution, its immensely effective because it always starts with a story (and usually a joke) and ends with bult in 'homework' that everyone is happy to do !
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