Bonneville America Forums Forums Technical Forums Performance Mods Weather-proofing our Triumphs?

Well it finally happened to me today. Commuting home in torrential rain, my America died only 3 kms from home. I knew it had to be ignition related by the behaviour of the bike before it finally died and reason was probably wet leads or electrical connections. Surprising I didn't panic but calmly rolled off onto the kerb of a very busy motorway in peak hour mania. Sat for a minute having a good think and weighing up my options. Gave my starter another jab and it didn't look too promising. Thought about all the wet ignition posts I've read on Triumph blogs over the last six months. Whipped out a business card from a very wet wallet and gave a local motorcycle recovery service a call to find they were about 45 minutes away. Gave the guy my details and tried to rug up for a very cold and wet wait. I thought I'd give my starter another jab a couple of minutes later and lo-and-behold she started up on one cylinder and with a bit of revving settled down nicely on both cylinders again. I then cancelled the recovery guy and hi-tailed it home to a warm fire to dry out my wet clothes.
What did I learn from all of this?
1/ If your wife says take the car today because it looks like it's going to be very wet - THEN TAKE THE CAR.
2/ Mobile phones certainly come in handy at times like this.
3/ Keep a motorcycle breakdown service card in your wallet or at least their phone number in your mobile phone.
4/ If you have the room, keep a small can of water repellant spray in your tool roll or saddle bags.
Ironically I went looking for some WD-40 spray before my ride home but couldn't find any. I'll give my HT caps a good wipe down & spray tonight and will then keep that can of WD-40 in my panniers. In the mean time I'm interested in finding out if other TBA or Speedie owners have found a more weather-proof Spark plug caps?

As a footnote, I was a little disappointed at the time that a Triumph with a mere 10,000kms on it would prove so vulnerable in wet weather,especially given that I deliberately avoided any deep patches of water on the road. I've ridden my previous Kawasaki across rivers & creeks withs so much a missed beat. Would the side-stand switch getting wet cause the ignition to falter?
TIA
John Q

John, Just a thought, It might not be electrical. Had mine cut out once in very heavy rain. What can happen is the breather tube from the tank gets clogged with water and road grime and the engine gets starved of petrol and cuts out. The easy cure is to cut the bottom of the breather tube at +-45 degrees, this stops it getting clogged. As a side note if this happens again try unscrewing the petrol cap a couple of turns, let some air in, screw it back in and try starting it.

We get rained on a LOT in Scotland and apart from that one time I've never had any issues with the bike in the wet. As you stated, after a few minutes your bike started up again,its unlikely the electrics would have dried out in such a short time, but it could have been long enough to let some air get to the tank.

It was torrential rain though. I saw lots of vehicles broken down. Luckily I was warm and cosy in the car.

Thanks for the tip Colin. First thing I did when the old girl died was pop the fuel cap to check the fuel level. I took your advice & tonight I checked the vent line to find it OK. Failing any other helpful advice from some very experienced BA members, I've just arranged to get some Magnacore HT leads made up tomorrow with some very waterproof caps. Prior to my return to motorcycling, I was heavily involved in competition 4WDing and Magnacore custom HT leads were the ducks guts for keeping your petrol engine running while giving it a decent dunking in rivers & creeks. I'm hoping I'll have the same success with these leads on my TBA. The reason I'm fairly confident the problem was spark related is that when I did manage to get the old girl running, she ran on just one cylinder for about 30 seconds before settling down as a happy twin again. I would nearly bet my left gonad it was the r/h cylinder that died due to the tremendous amount of road spray coming off a series of B-Double semi's.

I'm glad you got home under your own steam. My bike is similar vintage(?) to yours so I'll be interested to hear your diagnosis - and I'll get some more lanolin on the likely suspects.

Lubrication - it's just a slip of the tongue.

I think it all started with our mum's getting cracked nipples when breast feeding us and the doctor prescribing wool fat to ease the cracking.
But I'm sure that had nothing to do with me naming my frst born daughter Baabaara?

Dielectric grease if your friend. I use it on every connector on the bike. I pack the connectors, put them together, and wipe off the excess. Use on the HT connectors, spark plug boots, fuses, etc. There's lots of connectors on these bikes, and every one of them needs to be touched.

On my 2010, most of the connectors were done at the factor with dielectric grease. On our 2007, I had to do more of them.

I just went throught the bike front to back, starting at the headlight shell. Don't forget the starter cables, starter solenoid, battery, oil pressure sender, rear brake switch, etc.

HTH,
H.

Thanks H,
I bought a tube of di-electric grease but it has some type of graphite added so that everything you touch becomes filthy. Do you know if you can buy clear dielectric grease and is there a risk of the spark tracking down the outside of the plug to earth if you use too much on your HT caps?
Thanks
John Q

yes, buy the clear stuff in the toothpaste like tube. It will last a long time and is a necessity for any bike electrical system.

What's HT??

High Tension
They are the wires which go from the Ignition coil to the spark plugs. Tension in this case is a synonym for voltage, the cables therefore carry a high voltage to the spark plugs or in the scenario of my post, they carry a high voltage to the outside of a wet spark plug to earth and you have a dead Triumph.

I get the clear dielectric grease from Permatex. I haven't seen this grease with graphite before.. not that I've looked for it.

It won't run with the heat. It stays put. It won't leak the spark from the HT leads. I used it at both ends of the HT leads, and put some on the porcelain of the plugs to help seal the plug boots.

Have a look at the spark plug boots. Make sure the insulators aren't cracked.

HTH,
H.

FWIW Magnecor specifcally cautions against packing the plug & coil terminals with grease.

I have Magncor wires on my bike & just had a trip with 115+ miles (not km) of rain, some of it really heavy, with no fuel/ignition issues.

The vent hose on my bike terminates above the swingarm.

Funny, when I first read postings on here about "di-electric grease", I went looking for it here in town. I asked at the hardware store and both auto parts stores,(O'Reilly's and Auto Zone). Nobody had heard of it. I still haven't found it around here.

Sometimes dielectric grease is referred to as 'tune-up grease'. Permatex makes it.

H.

You can find this at any of our local auto parts stores but if you ask for dielectric grease you'll get a blank look, they all only know it as 'tune-up grease'

glad to hear you got it sorted John
had the same trouble with mine a few years ago,ended up bein water on the connectors to the coil +and - gave em a hit with the dielectric grease and havent had trouble since
which reminds me i'll do them again befor i head off to Bulahdelah......
the weather you guys have been having....a man would be silly not too