TT250 Electrical & Charging System Issues

[turanic5038]

Unfortunately having some issues with the charging system... It doesn't seem as if the alternator is working. Today the bike died on me mid ride. Brought it home, charged the battery, and hooked up a meter to the battery while running. No voltage increase with throttle is leading me to believe that something is wrong with the alternator. Anyone else have this issue? I dont think its just the battery because it seems to be holding a charge fine when charged with an external source.

No mods to the bike as of yet except for the digital cluster.

Also on a side note I have realized recently that my right blinker is acting funny... will blink at a normal brightness and pace then get very dim and blink fast. Not sure if this was caused by the cluster but I don't think so. When I had the battery charging through jumper cables attached to my girlfriends car the blinker was working fine, blinking brightly at the correct rate.

[Ariel Red Hunter]

Originally Posted by turanic5038

Unfortunately having some issues with the charging system... It doesn't seem as if the alternator is working. Today the bike died on me mid ride. Brought it home, charged the battery, and hooked up a meter to the battery while running. No voltage increase with throttle is leading me to believe that something is wrong with the alternator. Anyone else have this issue? I dont think its just the battery because it seems to be holding a charge fine when charged with an external source.

No mods to the bike as of yet except for the digital cluster.

Also on a side note I have realized recently that my right blinker is acting funny... will blink at a normal brightness and pace then get very dim and blink fast. Not sure if this was caused by the cluster but I don't think so. When I had the battery charging through jumper cables attached to my girlfriends car the blinker was working fine, blinking brightly at the correct rate.

I am a long way from an expert on electrical issues, but I would suspect the voltage regulator first off. The turn signal issue that you reported is usually caused by low voltage.

[kohburn]

i've got the same turn signal issue now also. left signal is fine only happens to the right.

have you contacted CSC about it yet? i plan to email them in the morning.

[turanic5038]

I havent contacted CSC yet. I want to pull off the plastics and take a look at everything first to make sure I didn't mess up when wiring when installing the new cluster.

['16 TT250]

I think there's a fuse for the charging circuit, if so it's worth checking. Low voltage will cause turn signals to act funny so it's probably a result of the no-charge condition.

[kohburn]

would a low charge not affect BOTH signals rather than only one?


on mine it works fine at speed (engine revving) but does the blink and fade at idle. There seems to be some sort of power loss or resistance on the right blinker circuit, I'm wondering if it is inside the switch.

['16 TT250]

It should effect both the same, but we are talking about a Chinese bike so who knows. More resistance in the circuit on one side is likely, or a defect in one of the signals.

[turanic5038]

I'm going to check the battery fuse when i get the chance. The CSC manual says this is the only fuse on the bike. I'm going to hope this is the issue... I'm thinking maybe part of my wiring may have been exposes and caused a short.

[turanic5038]

I found the cause of my electrical woes... Turns out 16' TT250 was right about the voltage regulator. The connector was just barely disconnected, it looks like it may have separated because I didn't give the wires enough slack when zip-tying. Lesson learned: give the wires slack when rerouting

When I went over a bump or something the connector must have came loose. This fixed my blinker issue as well, and now I have a battery voltage jump when I rev the engine... awesome.

So anyone having issues with funky blinkers may want to check the voltage regulator connection.

Now that that's taken care of .... time to install the new pipes and jets.

[BlackBike]

When mine was new , I took the time and wrapped almost 100% of my wiring with electric tape to protect it as much as possible. And still, a couple of months later when doing the valve check I still found a connector that was being rubbed and was about to break thru to the wires.

Murphy's law is a popular adage that states that "things will go wrong in any given situation, if you give them a chance," or more commonly, "whatever can go wrong, will go wrong." A number of variants on the rule have been formulated, as have several corollaries.

[turanic5038]

I should do the same. I was limited on time today so I only wrapped up the problem area. Definitely a good idea to make sure wires aren't loose

[hertz9753]

It reminds me of the zip tie on my Hawk clutch cable. It was so tight on the front down tube that you couldn't pull the cable up. The slack cable was below the tie and would disengage the clutch when I turned.

['16 TT250]

When 'sealing' wiring connections remember that if it's not 100% sealed, which is hard to do, it makes it not breath. Translation; if moisture gets in it'll stay in longer than if the connection was just wide open. A single wire connection is relatively easy to seal, multi wire connections, especially with quick connectors, are very hard to seal.

Wrapping with electrical tape buys time, unfortunately it sometimes leads to bigger problems once the problems become apparent. I recently experienced this with one of my other bikes, a CBR1100XX. There's a 'test connector' that's sealed after a factory test is conducted. It was discovered that the early 'sealing' was inadequate so it was changed in 2000 and deemed to be permanent. My 2001 XX started suffering classic symptoms of a failed test connector so I tore into it and sure enough it was wrecked. Had to cut the harness pretty far back from the connector to reach clean copper. I've had wires in boats that were corroded over 10' from a "sealed" factory connection.

Something to consider when a waterproof connection isn't really warranted or viable is to treat it with something like CorrosionX, CRC 2-26, or another penetrating protectant. I've had a fair bit of experience with both and they do a good job. Barring full submersion I'm pretty confident in them. I've heard that CorrosionX can handle full submersion of unsealed servos and receivers in an R/C boat if one is dumb enough to crash & sink it repeatedly, but they'r low amperage so it's a mild test.

[2LZ]

Great find! I'm glad it was a simple connection.
Blinkers: On my new RX3 (same blinkers as the TT250), I discovered that with the LEDs, they either work or they don't. There's not much in between. One day it worked, the next day it didn't. I checked all the connections. Bad blinker.

Typical electronics. They'll either last a lifetime or die rapidly. CSC had another to me overnight.