It ran great for a day.

I'm so depressed.


I have been riding my "new" 93 VFR 750 (salvage title) for a few hours. I bought her last week for 1875.00 She has 48,000 miles on her. I picked her up yesterday and rode her home. She ran great. Today I was riding to the beach and stopped to get gas. She would turn over but not start. Then after about twenty times the battery went. I had her towed home :frown:

I took the battery out of my Hyosung gt250r and put it in the VFR. She would turn over but not start and smelled badly of gas. I waited a few hours and went back out. She fired right up. I started turning off the motor and starting it back up. The second battery starting giving out. I can usually fire it up every two hours but it won't restart if I turn her off and then retry.

The hours that I did ride her was such a great experience. I bought a 2008 gt250r a year ago to learn ( I rode dirt bikes as a kid). I'm actually glad I started on the 250 but after experiencing this there is no way I am going back.

has any one experienced this? does this sound like something like an alternator or starter? are there shops that can rebuild mine or sell parts for a 93.

This is a sad intro but I love the VFR. I see myself owning many more until I'm too old to ride.

 

Do you have a multi-meter?

If so I'd charge your newest battery to full charge and put in the bike. (you may want a second person to help) Start the bike and put the multi-meter on the 20 volt setting then rev and hold the bike at 5,000 rpms. What numbers are you getting on the mult-meter.

Sometimes mulit-meters are mistakingly called voltmeters.

BZ

 

Sounds like the dreaded R/R problem. I bought a low milage '97 rode it home, went for a ride the next day and it just died about 5 miles from home. Do a search here on R/R replacement-the only real flaw in the 3/4/5 gen bikes.

 

check the plug coming from your rr. if it is charred you can bet the rr is fried and posibly your stator too. contact Wire My Bike he has an addition to your harness to prevent this from happening again.

 

Hey Karl61
Dont take my comments too seriously....Some of this is very sage advice......
However for the test described you don't really need a multimeter....seldom spelled with a hyhpen.
A simple DC voltmeter will do perfectly. If it is an autoranging meter don't spend too long looking for the 20 volt setting. It'll spit out the info all by itself.
Some might mistakenly call a voltmeter a mulit-meter but it's not a big deal. If you are just talking you seldom hear the hyphen. Mullet, somtimes mistakenly called mulit can be measured with a tape or scale. (Don't count the scales)
A rose by any other name might be a Fluke.
Sorry Bubba, I couldn't help myself!
Good luck with the diagnoses...the guys here will help you greatly......right Bubba?

 

Thanks everyone for the feed back and information. The "wire my bike" link had great information. I would rather be proactive and address problems before the arise but then again I just bought the bike. I will take it to the shop I get my other bike worked on - they are really good. I will show them the thread and they likely have done it many times before and know what to do.

 

Never fear. The VFR's have few faults but they ones they do have are common. The R/R is a major one that has lasted for generations of bikes. The guy may have been selling for just this reason or it could have just been its time and happened randomly on your ride home. Get her fixed up right and enjoy her.

 

update - I contacted the gentleman who sold the bike to me. He was just as baffled as I was. I did recharge a newer battery, put it in and it fired right up. I think I had a problem with a weak battery.

He told me the parts on the bike are newer version with the fins; that he has heard of people installing CPU cooling fans on them, He said he replaced the main wires with a heavier gauge to lessen resistance. He said that was a tip from the VFRWorld.

 

You still need to check the charging voltage as Bubba suggested, and check the 3-wire plug as Steven said.

 

I'm think I found out what happened: I tried to start and kept trying to start it with the "switch" off. It drained the battery quickly. My newer bike won't try to start if the switch is off. It's just dead. (feeling hot, red faced, and dumb).

 

Everyone raise your hand if this has bitten you in the past.

*Raises hand*

You're not alone in this. Many of us have done this regardless of whether the bike would just fail to crank or fail to start. Hell, many of us have panicked and come here for help because our bikes wouldn't even crank.... even though it was all our fault and we forgot to simply hit the kill switch over to run.

No worries man. It might be the first time but it sure won't be the last. But now that you've come here, it will happen a hell of a lot less!

 

Thanks Meatloaf for your comments and thoughts - good information is a big blessing in this world.