My new 700 died on me last Monday. I rode it to Wal-mart, no problems at all. Bought my crap, hopped on the bike, turned the key, pulled in the clutch, pushed the go button, and…NOTHING. I tried push starting it, NOTHING. Tried the button again, and VROOOOM! I started hauling ass for home and almost got there when it died on me again, this time while I was riding. The thing that caught my notice was that the RPMs went straight to zero even though I could still feel the momentum dragging the engine around. I had the wiring diagram on a PDF, but I prefer to look at it on paper. What I was looking for was whatever the tachometer and the starter had in common…
A friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, helped me print out the wiring diagram for my 700S 36″ x 48″. I stared at it for about 30 minutes and eventually deduced that my problems had to be the Black Wire.
My hunt for the black wire eventually led me to the fuse block. The 15A Ignition fuse was showing me between 11-12v on the top prong, but only about .8V on the bottom prong. This is not standard behavior for a good fuse.
The fuse in question, doesn’t look so bad from here.
So, the multimeter says it’s a good fuse? But that’s on the ends, and the fuse block grips the sides of the tips…
Well, if you test it on the sides of the endcaps, you get an open circuit. BAD FUSE!
Well, I decided to test the end caps, and they fell right apart in my hands. I guess that happens to old fuses.
Needless to say, I went to the hardware store and bought all new fuses for my bike. I don’t want to have this problem again. Did I mention I ended up pushing the damn thing home the last mile the day it died?