Engine Wants to Shut Down after Full Throttle

[jamesn]

So true Jack...I'm looking at the Compu-Fire 40amp 3-Phase system. If anybody has experience of this system for TwinCams or other systems suitable for a 2004 Softail I'd be interested to hear of them.

I've ridden a couple of long rides since my last post and now even the DTC-U1255 doesn't exist. I'm so much looking forward to going over all my electrical wires and parts in an attempt to find the culprit.

The bikes 7 years old, with 80,000 miles clocked up, 2 engine rebiluds and 2 frame modifications first a 250 rear and now the right side drive 300 rear, I think the electronics are starting to brake down from all the modifications, but I can't complain as they've done me well over the years.

However, I never want to experience this again...I'll have no hair left! After I check over everything I think it's about time I put another bell on my bike as it's only been this last year that I've not had one hanging low.

 

[jamesn]

I'm confident that I finally found my gremlin...

Over the weekend I installed a heavy duty starter motor and in the process I went over all electrical parts and greased all electrical plugs behind the oil tank. When removing the main circuit breaker to access the small oil tank bolts the breaker fell apart in my hands and the tin cover had mud it in...Evidence of once having water trapped inside. Everything else looks fine.

On assembly I'll also be checking out my RH handlebar controls - switches.

 

[HDDon]

Thanks for getting back to us. I'm sure there will be quite a few members checking for this problem.

 

[jamesn]

Thanks guys but I don't think a circut breaker would have caused my problem, if it was this the whole bike would shut down once the fault was activated. I still can't explain why the fault when first experienced would only activate when twisting full throttle and allowing the engine to rev to 4,000 rpm...the engine would still run and rev to the limiter but the decell was dead until I switched the engine off & on again...I could ride the bike all day with the fault present but only the decell being dead. However, if I twisted the throttle slow and easy the engine would rev to the rev limter without activating the fault.

I'm glad this has all gone now and that water was the cause but it would be nice to find what water had got into to have caused it, as I don't want it back again.

Late yesterday afternoon I stumbled across a wire that had been rubbing on my oil tank, just ware and tare after 7 years of rubbing. It had warn through to bare wires and would explain why I wasn't holding a full charge, the battery losing power when left parked up for longer than a week, if not left on a trickle charge.

My HD Mech still claims that something may be wrong with my TSSM and could have had water in it and now that it's dry everything is back to nomal. He wants me to put my original TSM back in but with not having the fault present I'll never know if it was the cause, and I don't what the bike unarmed when left out.

I still intend to inspect my RH controls as I know there is a suspect wire inside...a while ago I had to do some urgent repairs and the quick mend done may have come adrift...but this still wouldn't explain why fault activated at 4,000 rpm and only if holding full throttle.

Will keep you informed as I find more and what I find in the RH controls...glad we've rotten weather at the moment because not being out on the road is killing me.

 

[R_W_B]

Like Don said I appreciate getting back with us on it. Many times we have no idea how the problem ever rectified or even if it did at all.

The bare wire thing definitely needs fixed. It sounds like your problem was corrosion (resulting from water, rain over time). As to why it happened only during certain rpms etc was the most puzzling.

It's possible that a corroded item only affected it's data reporting at a certain vibration level. This could have recorded corrupted (but still readable) values to stored memory, which then affected idle runtime later.

It's anybody's guess on things like this. But I know from many hours of tracing code thru a debugger, when you finally track down the one thing that records the faulty data, it can be pretty amazing sometimes what it was. Of course the bike cannot be hooked up in running condition to a debugger with single step ability, but just saying.