My Orange Beast (KTM 950 Supermoto) has been under the weather lately. Every now and then it would blow out a fuse. It would always be the fuse responsible for the brake lights, horn and the blinkers. I have no problem with my horn not working as I never use it. However the blinkers are something I use quite frequently. And a non working brake light could end up being bad news for any rider. As you realize a motorcycle can stop a bit faster than a car. Needless to say that a non working brake light on your bike is not a good thing to begin with. Let alone the fact that I am a lane splitting bastard. May motorcycle God bless California for that.

This ailment began about a month ago. After a visual inspection of the visible wiring no problems were found. The fuse was replaced and the problem was pushed back in the quality assurance testing queue :). In a week the same fuse got blown out again. And then again in a couple of days. Despite being a very affordable thing (one can buy like 20 fuses for like 5 bucks) this was becoming increasingly annoying. And yesterday’s outbreak was the last straw. The ailment of my beloved domesticated Orange Beast was becoming more prominent. Though not being an incapacitating wound it could have turned into the one that could potentially make the rider, yours truly, incapacitated :).

I went through 3 fuses just yesterday morning alone and still could not find a pattern. I decided to stop at a gas station and try to get to the bottom of this. After a good 10 minutes of desperately applying the front and the rear brake while frantically switching my blinkers on and off it looked like I had founded the culprit - the front brake lever. Still repetitive inspections of visible parts of wires did not show any signs of wear and tear.

Later that day I stopped by Motodisiac’s. Two pairs of eyes are always better than one. I was trying to reproduce the “exact” sequence of semi-random events of me turning blinkers on and off and applying brakes. Nothing was happening. All of the sudden I sensed a smell of something burning. “I don’t smell anything” - said Motodisiac. The moment he said that both us saw smoke coming from where the wires were going in between the front fork. We immediately turned the bike off. Motodisiac removed the 2 screws that keep the front console and the headlight attached to the frame to get a better look at the wires. What do you know. A significant wear and tear to the two wires that go from the front brake lever. “That is how motorcycles catch on fire” - he said. It is true, had we not discovered this problem my bike would have eventually caught on fire. And the Orange Beast would have passed on. Luckily we have found this problem. The wear and tear on those 2 wires was patched up, wires properly isolated one from another. And just like that the Orange Beast had been healed.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 at 1:26 pm and is filed under Motorcycles, Street, Riding, Learning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.