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#101839
Beezabryan's point about the battery is worth investigating. For the E/S to work well, it needs a REALLY healthy battery. What you can get is a situation where the battery has partly degraded, it will hold enough charge for you to kick start the bike successfully and power all the other electrics satisfactorily, at least with the engine running, but nothing doing when you press the starter button.

Both the OEM lead acid battery and the one I replaced it with ended up in this state. I finally prized my wallet open far enough for a Motobatt MBTX14AU AGM battery, what a difference that made.

As for the ignition switch flicker, you've either got an intermittent contact or an intermittent earth, if it's not the switch itself, try an extra earth from the battery straight to the gearbox. ISTRC the gearbox shell is powder coated, might be worth scraping some of that off.

As the last Electra-X models imported into the UK were made as long ago as 2007, I'd also be thinking about a replacement reg/rectifier at some stage.

A.
#101842
Hello Wheaters, cheers for the reply. I will look into doing what you have suggested concerning the neutral switch behind the gearbox. But I have had fun and games today out on the Enfield thinking everything was sorted and managed to come to a standstill power failure in the middle of the New forest Hampshire on a bonkers hot day, I managed to limp the bike to a distant house where my bike is currently residing in a horse stable thanks to the kindly owners.

This is what happened, as I wanted to test it electric wise.

While at home I managed to get a fairly stable Neutral light along with all other electrics behaving so decided to get the bike back together and out for a test spin in the forest.

Was kick starting no problem

Set off, all was going well, bike felt lively and responsive for about 15 minutes and I noted the Ampmeter was registering more to the right past the mid point where it had been hanging around before.

Decided to see how this would all fair with the lights on, so at this point bike is running nice so full lights on, speedo night lights showing, indicator signal on the speedo showing all correct, then it all started going wrong .

In this order, while still moving:

Speedo lights went out
Full lights went out
Indicator lights stopped working
And sure the backlight and brake light would have been out to
Then worst of all the bike stalled and stopped no power at all in front of a crowd at an ice cream van, had to pretend I was stopping for that purpose so I casually just sat on my bike and till the current crowd left.

So no power at all, wouldn't kick over, getting hot and bothered exactly what I didn't want.
But eventually a faint Neutral light appeared and it kicked over, but as soon as I applied the brake the power to the tail light cut the engine out.

Took the rear bulb out so no lights at all would come on (luckily not a busy area) and would keep my hands away from indicators and lights just wanted to limp it home managed to get it started again and slowly headed back in a cautious limp mode, was going ok then the engine really started to misbehave, back fired a few times ,the horses loved that then it started to sound like some byplane coming to an end.

Stopped / Bike currently in a stable in the forest.

I'm going to go down the new battery route here and rule that in or out as I need to get it back home in the next couple of days
Going for a more powerful battery a motorbatt 16AH as opposed to my Yuasa , took a picture and dimensions a few days ago In case I needed to know the spec and now I do. Just don't get how the battery was all lively then went so downhill so quickly.

Anyway thanks for reading unless you've fallen asleep reading all that, did go on abit.

Thanks
Geoff

Pics below my old battery and intended new one MOTORBATT YTX14AHLBS seem to tie up.
#101843
Hello Wheaters, cheers for the reply. I will look into doing what you have suggested concerning the neutral switch behind the gearbox. But I have had fun and games today out on the Enfield thinking everything was sorted and managed to come to a standstill power failure in the middle of the New forest Hampshire on a bonkers hot day, I managed to limp the bike to a distant house where my bike is currently residing in a horse stable thanks to the kindly owners.

This is what happened, as I wanted to test it electric wise.

While at home I managed to get a fairly stable Neutral light along with all other electrics behaving so decided to get the bike back together and out for a test spin in the forest.

Was kick starting no problem

Set off, all was going well, bike felt lively and responsive for about 15 minutes and I noted the Ampmeter was registering more to the right past the mid point where it had been hanging around before.

Decided to see how this would all fair with the lights on, so at this point bike is running nice so full lights on, speedo night lights showing, indicator signal on the speedo showing all correct, then it all started going wrong .

In this order, while still moving:

Speedo lights went out
Full lights went out
Indicator lights stopped working
And sure the backlight and brake light would have been out to
Then worst of all the bike stalled and stopped no power at all in front of a crowd at an ice cream van, had to pretend I was stopping for that purpose so I casually just sat on my bike and till the current crowd left.

So no power at all, wouldn't kick over, getting hot and bothered exactly what I didn't want.
But eventually a faint Neutral light appeared and it kicked over, but as soon as I applied the brake the power to the tail light cut the engine out.

Took the rear bulb out so no lights at all would come on (luckily not a busy area) and would keep my hands away from indicators and lights just wanted to limp it home managed to get it started again and slowly headed back in a cautious limp mode, was going ok then the engine really started to misbehave, back fired a few times ,the horses loved that then it started to sound like some byplane coming to an end.

Stopped / Bike currently in a stable in the forest.

I'm going to go down the new battery route here and rule that in or out as I need to get it back home in the next couple of days
Going for a more powerful battery a motorbatt 16AH as opposed to my Yuasa , took a picture and dimensions a few days ago In case I needed to know the spec and now I do. Just don't get how the battery was all lively then went so downhill so quickly.

Anyway thanks for reading unless you've fallen asleep reading all that, did go on abit.

Thanks
Geoff

Pics below my old battery and intended new one MOTORBATT YTX14AHLBS seem to tie up.
#101846
Are the battery connections tight?
Check the voltage across the battery it sounds like your battery is dying or dead but it could be the alternator or regulator/ rectifier (you need to know if it's charging or not) unfortunately you will need to get the bike running to test

Try rechecking the wiring near the headstock (could it have separated again?)

When fault finding on electrics I find a incandescent type of test light not LED connected in series to the multimeter will show bad connections that a digital meter will miss due to it loading the circuit

Hope something here helps Dai


Edit forgot to say where the loom splits along with connectors and earths are where I look after the battery when trouble shooting electrical issues
#101847
Thanks for you input Dai, battery connections are very tight, still a fair amount to check but heading down the new battery road anyway.

Is there an optimal place for needle on the Ampmeter to sit at with a healthy charging battery, was noticeably up past the mid point just today then dipped a lot with everything on, then the days shenanigans started .

Cheers
Geoff
#101848
The ammeter should be in the positive / green side when running at higher rev's at tick over it will be reading lower probably around the middle of the dial (more towards the negative red side)
All it shows is the charge going too and from the battery
The alternator will produce a higher voltage than the bike electrics and battery can use and this is alternating currant A/C the bike and battery need D/C this is where the rectifier comes in the current is converted to D/C then the regulator brings the voltage down to 14.5 when engine is running.
If everything is working correctly the voltage across the battery with engine not running should be about 12.6, when running it should vary from 12.6 to 14.6 depending on the RPM

Some Bullets run A/C to the headlight and I don't know if yours falls into this group someone here will know for sure.

Sorry if you know all this already not everyone does(spelin)(dam dyslexia)

Hope this helps Dai
#101849
Just a thought it broke down with a high electrical load i wonder did it stop after you used indicators, horn, brakes, headlight, etc if so this could point you in the right direction
If you hit a pothole or after a tight turn it stopped it could point to a lose connection or brake in the wiring
If it was running fine then just stopped I would suspect a fuel issue
If it started misfiring before it stopped I would look at electrical

Cheers Dai
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