A Night To Remember

[ffutures]

Went along to rozk's birthday bash, attended by what seemed to be half of the British side of Livejournal, at a teeny but extremely good Vietnamese restaurant in Hackney. Had an excellent and surprisingly cheap meal, and enjoyed myself immensely.

At about nine people started getting ready to move on to the pub. I decided I'd better head home since tomorrow's a working day, and set out to do so. At which point I discovered that my bike (a) wasn't prepared to start and (b) wasn't showing any signs of life at all when switched on. Couldn't get it started by pushing it, couldn't see anything obviously wrong, nada.

Get out the mobile and call the AA, then wait 30 minutes or so for their van to arrive. AA guy connects up his charger to the battery and suggests I try again. I do so, and there's a slightly unexpected result - smoke comes out from under the control panel.

To cut a long story short, the wiring loom between the main electrics and the ignition switch had shorted, which is why it initially wouldn't start. The extra juice fried the wiring completely, and it caught fire. When we got the panel off it was still sparking merrily until he cut the wires.

Fortunately the short didn't set fire to the fuel tank (the cable runs underneath it) and didn't quite extend all the way to the switch. The AA guy was able to cut away the burned out part, wire in some lengths of suitable cable and bundle them together with insulating tape, crimp on terminal clips, and eventually get it all working again. Hopefully I will be able to get a replacement cable loom, but that might involve getting a new ignition switch - with a lot of luck this won't involve the ignition ending up with a different key to the other nine on the luggage, steering lock, petrol cap, etc...

Took about an hour and a quarter in all to fix it, got home about 11.30, and I think that this year my AA membership and cellphone have just paid for themselves, because if I'd tried to sort that one out by myself the bike would probably be a smouldering wreck by now.

And so to bed...

Comments

[paratti.livejournal.com]

Ouch. And Bummer.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

It was actually pretty painless once the problem was diagnosed properly, just a long and fiddly job to fix, made more complicated by some amazingly naff design decisions from BMW.

[i_kender]

Oh dear oh dear, what a terrible end to a nice evening!

It was good to meet you finally (I was sitting two to your left) and when I left the (very trendy) Hoxton pub they were all still merrily drinking away...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

We should have worn little badges with our lj user names - I've actually got one somewhere! Maybe when I do my 60th birthday bash in 2013...

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Hopefully I will be able to get a replacement cable loom, but that might involve getting a new ignition switch

Still sounds a rather expensive evening - but it could have been a good deal worse, by the sound of it - it sounds rather like no bike was a distinct possibility!

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Looks like it's fixable with a soldering iron and some cable - hope so anyway, the switch costs more than 50 quid!

[houses7177.livejournal.com]

Er, I'm glad your evening didn't end in fiery doom.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks!