97 std DOA

[aslondon]

Yesterday the ol girl  decided to be a bit finicky. Without warning she was DOA. No lights no start no nothing . Wouldn't  jump off my truck wouldn't start off freshly charged battery. Nothing. Everything seem to check out perfectly. Starting relay was fine no deterioration. After extensive testing it turned out to be a bad ground.  The definitive task was attaching a battery cable from negative terminal to a different ground point and voila it started. Strange because no sign of corrosion at either end of the ground wire. Once I took off the screw behind the alternator cleaned it and reattached it we were good to go. Simplest way to get wire off was using a 1/4 ratchet with 10mm socket and no extension. Piece of cake.

Al
Vrcc4321

[Thunderbolt]

Glad you got it going.  Always good to have real world experience to add to the list of things that could possibly go wrong.  Thanks for posting the result.

[sandy]

The ground wire gets moisture inside the insulation. It corrodes under the insulation.

[MarkT]

Common problem.  The main ground is to the ALUMINUM engine block.  Move it to the steel frame and add a ground strap between engine and frame.  Or (not as permanent a fix in my opinion) put a fresh star washer under the engine ground wire after cleaning the aluminum thoroughly, then add dielectric grease to prevent galvanic corrosion / oxidation of the aluminum.  This bad design left me stranded on a road trip without enough tools to find and fix it.

[texaninsouthfl]

Yesterday the ol girl  decided to be a bit finicky. Without warning she was DOA. No lights no start no nothing . Wouldn't  jump off my truck wouldn't start off freshly charged battery. Nothing. Everything seem to check out perfectly. Starting relay was fine no deterioration. After extensive testing it turned out to be a bad ground.  The definitive task was attaching a battery cable from negative terminal to a different ground point and voila it started. Strange because no sign of corrosion at either end of the ground wire. Once I took off the screw behind the alternator cleaned it and reattached it we were good to go. Simplest way to get wire off was using a 1/4 ratchet with 10mm socket and no extension. Piece of cake.

Al
Vrcc4321

That is pretty much EXACTLY what happened to me about a month ago... except I went through several other things before discovering the bad ground. Lesson learned!

... and by the way, where were you geniuses who say this is a common problem when I was asking for suggestions on the forum?   

[Brian]

Here I thought the engineers at Honda created a perfect motorcycle. Like not having to upgrade the rear bearings? Thanks for this heads up. I am glad you got her running without too much trouble.

[aslondon]

Ground strap is a great idea. Unfortunately, didn't have one at hand and was working in grass outside my RV. The corrosion was between cable end and engine.  Only tool I had to clean it was wife's emery board The corrosion was almost invisible and actually once I got it apart I still didn't think it was corroded until I "sanded" the parts. The Boeshield is used to prevent corrosion and actually is quite runny when sprayed on then kind of skins over and forms a protective barrier.  At least I now know what to look for.