More Electrical gremlins.

This all started pretty simply. I needed to install new tires and decided to repair the wire to the front fender light on my 2001 FLHTC while I had the wheel off.
Tire change went smoothly, repaired the cracked wire by soldering the pieces, careful to keep my + and - correct put a new rubber grommet in the front fender and shrink wrapped the repair and I’m good to go. 25 mile test ride on my usual short loop and everything checks out.

Next day I pull out the bike to run some errands and it won’t start. Cranks great battery is good just no spark.

Power to the coil, Bench test coil, it seems good, switched out my DTT ignition module with a stock one, just to check for spark, no dice.

Test crank position sensor, it does produce a voltage showing on my meter so I think it might be good also.

Start with replacing the coil, still no spark. Move to crank position sensor, replaced that and carefully routed the wire cleaning up everything as I go.

VICTORY… it runs. Take my 25 mile test loop everything seem good.

So Sunday me and the GF decide to take a longer ride. The bikes running great, it used to have an occasional little skip like the kill button was momentarily pushed, and that seemed to have disappeared. I guess the cranks sensor may have been going bad for a while. On the way back after about 80 miles, (still 60 miles from home though) it just dies. Riding along, no miss beforehand nothing. Just goes dead. Pull over at a widespot in the road about 5 miles outside of Normalville ( Ha-Ha) and now nothing happens when I hit the starter button either. I know the ignition quit cause I was running down the road when it quit.

It gets better. I keep a phone in the bike for emergencies, ( I’m not a phone person) and the battery in it was dead. No problem I keep a charger in the bike, only the charger was for my old phone!!

Anyways I finally get a truck to haul the bike home and start checking things again.
I have a TSSM security module so I began to suspect that, since it is a common place for the control of the ignition and start circuits. I dug out my old TSM non-security module and went through the ½ hour procedure to marry it to the system and it started. Now I’m getting a little gun shy about riding it though. So I put on 20 mile just riding in various circles around my neighborhood, never too far to walk home if it quits. The locals probably thought I was nuts as many times as I went by. But AGAIN it seems to be running fine.

WTF is next??

I may just run the TSM for a while till I gather a few more bucks for another TSSM, I also had the siren on it but that had quit working about a year ago. The security system still worked just the siren add on quit. And I never got around to replacing the battery in it. It was 13 years old. but that may have been an indicator of a problem in the TSSM, since it should have still chirped when connected to the bikes battery.

This is the first time this thing has ever given me any electrical problems and I am the original owner. I just bought the Harley electrical diagnostic manual and am waiting for it to come in the mail. Maybe it will act as a talisman against future problems.

 

kill swich might be bad

 

had a broke ground wire on mine on the ignition no spark. also the white plug in the head light gave me all kinds of greef. good luck