Kiwi_Roy

The early VIIs like my 2001 Greeny had the start relay powered direct from the battery via fuse 5, (the start relay 30 terminal was always alive, it never had a problem cranking but then a couple of years later the factory changed the wiring so that the start relay is fed from the ignition switch via a switched fuse, thats when things went to hell in a handbasket. Pull out your start relay and see if the 30 terminal is alive with the key Off - Good Do you have to turn the key On - Bad MartyNZ said "I had these symptoms on my '03, after the bike sitting unused for too long with the rear drive out. I replaced the 5 pin relay in the forward position, and now all good. This time I binned the relay, instead of putting it in with all the spares of doubtful function in the monkey paw trap." Another problem with the VIIs the relay bases corrode or build up resistance between the pins and the socket, if you wiggle the relay in the socket it restores the connection somewhat, you can also remove the contacts from the base and squeeze each connector a little to improve the tension. I always applied a little Vaseline to my relay pins, there is probably something better. Typically the wire from the relay to the solenoid is too light a gauge, the factory don't size it for 50 Amps. Because the starter solenoid draws so much current while it is pulling the gear into mesh resistance between the battery and the solenoid is critical, 0.2 Ohms is right at the ragged edge. Calculate how much Voltage drop you will get at 50 Amps. Most other guzzles can be fixed by simply providing a new permanently On feed to the start relay however your VIIs use the normally closed start contact to power up the headlight relay so its a little tricky, lately I have been suggesting an additional relay to solve this problem. I can see some of you going "50 Amps, what's he smoking" so do a simple test, measure with your Ohmmeter from the spade connector to chassis (don't forget to subtract the lead resistance) Calculate 12 V / Resistance to get Amps. Ohmmeters are not particularly good for measuring low resistance but see what you get.

No, its not the solenoid, you are losing Voltage across the ignition switch and wiring, you can see it in the lights, there's not enough current to pull the battery down, its dropping across the resistance. I'm willing to bet if you took a jumper wire from the solenoid spade connector and touched it on battery Positive it would start every time no matter how cold. The starter solenoid is designed to draw 50+ Amps but its hampered by the switch and wiring. It's also possible the ignition switch has a higher resistance because the grease in it is cold, cleaning and replacing the grease with Vaseline would be a temporary fix.

When you press start does the starter clunk in then just refuse to turn i.e. can't generate enough torque. Try scraping the battery terminals and especially where the main ground connects to the gearbox. Measure the Voltage at the starter to chassis while its trying to turn, anything over 9.5 should spin it over. Or do you just get a quiet click from the relay? The lights going dim indicate low Voltage, possibly lost across the ignition switch., Measure the Voltage on the spade connector relative to chassis while you press start, if the starter is not cranking you should see 12 Volts. Keep in mind the solenoid is designed to draw 50 Amps while it engages the starter and it's not even turning yet. As Guzzi feed it through the ignition switch you are lucky to get even half the design current so why be surprised when it doesn't work? Finally try hot wiring the solenoid from the spade connector to the battery positive, thats how it is supposed to engage the starter, with a loud clunk. Thats the most direct way of operating the starter, if it doesn't engage and crank its a starter or battery problem (including bad connections) I posted a sketch here https://wildguzzi.com/forum/index.php?topic=113795.0

If you have any Guzzi that refuses to crank first of all clean and grease the battery terminals and the ground connection. Then test the battery and starter by hot wiring the starter solenoid direct to the battery, use a wire about 3 ft long with a spade connector on one end, touch the other end on battery positive (caution make sure its in neutral). You dont need the key On for this, you are just doing a crank test, if it cranks over you know that the battery and starter are both fine. If the engine cranks over with the hot wire but not via the normal starter circuit chances are you have Startus Interuptus. It's not so straight forward to fix on a VII Sport as the normally closed start relay contact feeds the headlight. An easy way around this is to add a relay fed direct from the battery or hot terminal of the solenoid with the contact feeding the solenoid. The new relay coil can be triggered by the existing solenoid trigger wire with a ground wire on the other coil terminal of course.

It's just the spacer for the bottom screw, stops you reefing on the screw until the glass breaks.

I always thought that was the case, my 2001 was that way but lately I have been helping an owner with an early VII Sport, his doesn't comply. It's also possible the ones sent to a different part of the world had a different loom. I have been dealing with a Stelvio owner in Europe, he sent me a schematic that is significantly different to the ones in Nth America. Thats why I'm trying to establish how the Start relay is wired up front. I think any with the direct wiring can be made to work without adding a relay

Thanks for your response, I went back and revised my wording a little hopefully its clearer Yes we are looking to find out what version of the wiring you have, I used to think the early ones all had a direct feed to the start relay but now I'm not so sure. Really it doesn't matter with the added relay how weak the original wiring is. If you have the wiring with always alive pin 30 you should be able to make it work. The wire from the relay to the solenoid is too small on most guzzles PM sent.

Applying a "Startus Interuptus" fix to a VII is a bit tricky, its not as simple as providing the start relay 30 terminal with a direct feed from the battery because the start relays 87A (normally closed contact) feeds the headlight relay. if you provide a direct feed to the 30 terminal the lights will come on when the key is Off. Heres a simple way around that using an additional relay. I call a booster relay. The relay coil is driven from the original solenoid trigger wire which now only has to provide a fraction of an Amp The new relay's contact is fed from the large positive terminal on the solenoid via a 20 Amp in-line fuse, the other contact feeds up to 60 Amps to the solenoid ensuring it will throw the gear into mesh faster than its ever done before. Its not the only way to boost the starting, you can run 12 Volts to the existing start relay and make other arrangements for the headlight relay, I just put this forward as a simple way of fixing a problem without chopping into the OEM wiring. The first thing to do is test for Voltage at the start relay 30 terminal with the key turned Off, if its present that's the earlier wiring bypassing the ignition switch. If the Voltage is only present with the key turned On thats the later wiring i consider to be weak as its throttled by the switch and extra wiring to and fro. The wiring at the top of the sketch is the OEM start relay, I only show the contact and don't show where the 12 Volt supply comes from. The wiring in Red is new. If you use an old Bosch relay with mounting tab you don't need a base, just use individual spade connectors. Re the solenoid, I thought an explanation might be helpful. I show both the coils in the solenoid side by side, each coil has about 300 turns of wire, they are actually one inside the other. The heavy one I call the Grunt coil because it does most of the work engaging the starter is wound on first, the light one I call the Holding coil is wound over the top. The coils are quite different in resistance, the Grunt coil is only 0.25 Ohms and the Holding coil is 1.25 Ohms so by simple Ohms Law you can calculate the current they draw. Grunt 12 V/0.25 Ohms = 48 Amps, Holding 12 V/1.25 Ohms = 9.6 Amps The magnetic strength of an electromagnet is the product of current x the number of turns. Grunt 48 x 300 = 14,400 Amp turns, Holding 9.6 x 300 = 2,880 Amp turns so you can see the Grunt coil is magnetically 5 times as strong as the Holding coil. Note how when the main contacts close the Grunt coil has +12 Volts on both ends, so the current in it drops to zero leaving just the Holding coil to keep the starter engaged. The time it takes for the solenoid to engage the starter gear is quite short, between 15 and 100 milliseconds all depending on how much current you can cram into the coils which is of course dependant on the resistance between the battery and the coils. If all this has made your eyes glaze over its just the half of it

I got a call from a friend with a VII Sport a couple of weeks back, he has owned the bike since new and done all the regular maintenance. He said the oil light came on for no reason at idle, could I come and have a look. He had the sump off when I got there, we couldn't see anything so concluded it must be a failed pressure switch and decided to put it back together. He would change the filter while it was apart. We took the hose clamp off the filter and screwed it off with a struggle. To our surprise it came off complete with a second rubber gasket all chewed up, It must have been working fine for months then finally given out while sitting waiting for parts. We concluded that the engine was fine and thanked his lucky stars.

A starter motor is almost a short circuit so if it locks up its probably pulling 250 Amps or More, I measured the starter on my VII once and found it drawing in the 150 - 170 Amp range. Any DC motor with brushes is also a generator, as it spins its producing a Voltage in the opposite direction to the battery, this is known as Back Electromotive Force (Back EMF for short), the faster it spins the less current it draws. Of course if its not spinning the only thing the limits the current is the load resistance and the batteries internal resistance. Its quite easy to measure the starter current all you need is a shunt made of regular wire and a cheap multimeter with a millivolt range. I'm sure there's a copy of my home made shunt sketch on here somewhere.

Didn't the early ones 2001, 2002 have Siemens relays, I was talking with a guy yesterday who had one new back then and he pointed out the early relays weren't the best, When I bought my 2001 it had several brands of relays Siemens included, the first thing I did at your suggestion was swap in a new set of Omrons and I never had a problem, on the same topic my bike started to run rough one day, I pinned it down to the ignition switch that was measuring ~18 Ohms, still cranked ok, even 1/2 an Ohm would cripple a 2004 with start relay through the switch Look at how the start relay 30 terminal is fed on this early version, straight from the battery through fuse 5, this will always crank. (solenoid pulling 50+ Amps for a split second) On the other hand powering the headlight relay from the normally closed Start relay isn't a good idea. Now look at this 2004, the power for the start relay comes from the ignition switch choking the solenoid to a fraction of its former self (< 30 Amps for seconds) and leaving it prone to Startus Interuptus It does have a better feed to the headlight however and they did away with the flaky Voltage reference to the regulator. Because this model uses the Normally Closed Start relay contact it rules out simply re-powering the relay 30 contact to fix the starting, there are a couple of ways around that.

The earlier bikes took a direct feed from the battery to the start relay so the relay could feed the solenoid coils about 50 Amps. all the ignition switch carried was about 6 Amps. I think about 2004 Guzzi changed the wiring to feed the start relay through the ignition switch so now the switch and wiring has to supply the solenoid coils, I doubt you will get more than 30 Amps on a good day, all kinds of Voltage drop through the switch and wiring. Net result 30/50 or 60% of the magnetic field the solenoid was designed to supply, would you be happy if your Guzzi engine only put out 60%? When the solenoid current drops a bit further through dirty contacts (around 25 Amps) the solenoid doesn't even try to move, eventually the 15 Amp fuse blows. As soon as the solenoid main contacts close the coil current drops to just 10 Amps, it doesn't take much to hold the solenoid in place because the gap is small but it takes a super strong magnetic field to get it to start moving when the gap is large. There are 2 coils in the solenoid The holding coil 300 turns of fairly light wire drawing 10 Amps 3,000 Ampere Turns The Grunt coil 300 turns of larger wire wound on next to the core so as well as being fatter its also much shorter drawing 40 or more Amps 12,000 Ampere Turns. (4 x as strong) Ampere turns is the way of expressing the magnetic field strength The best way to prove it to yourself is start the bike a few times normally then take a wire and feed the solenoid directly by touching the wire direct to the battery, on your 2005 the solenoid will snap in at least 3 x faster. BTW, a good battery will hold about 10 Volts while cranking but while the solenoid is stroking the Voltage should be over 12 because the contact is not yet closed. I've tried every way I can think of to explain Startus Interuptus, I guess I will never make a good teacher lol

If you carry under the seat a jumper cable about 3 ft long with a spade connector on one end and a bare wire at the other you can always slip it on the solenoid and touch the battery positive with the other. This will send 50 Amps to the solenoid and the starter will engage and spin. Just be careful to make sure the bike is in Neutral and pull the clutch for good measure. As well as starting the bike this jumper proves that the battery and starter are ok but of course if the battery is flat, disconnected or the starter is toast nothing will happen. I always found my VII Sport easy to bump start in 2nd gear.

IMHO you must provide a decent ground cable to the regulator case, all the current that passes through the red wire to the battery has to find its way back from chassis to the regulator case, the tiny black wire all the way back to the battery doesn't cut it. The Ducati Energia regulator doesn't directly control the battery Voltage, it regulates the Voltage between its black wire and case ground to 13.8 Volts so if the case is not connected to battery negative properly the Voltage you drop between negative and the case is lost. Probably when the bike was new it made fairly good contact to chassis but as it ages it has to rely more and more on the thin black wire. The path through the engine to the main ground connection to the battery is many times better than the black wire. A short heavy wire from the regulator case to a timing cover bolt is a vast improvement. I have even suggested using an aluminium strap in place of a wire with suitable grease to stop corrosion of course.

Marty, thanks for the research. I did a really interesting experiment a while back with a mixture of Sulphuric acid and an organic known as Nitrobenzine. The two solutions were mixed in a beaker with lab stirring system so it was a homogeneous mix. I started out with a 50:50 mix and kept increasing the acid ratio. All of a sudden the solution went from an insulator to a conductor. The process engineer I was working with explained that the solution flipped from drops of acid separated by an oil film to drops of oil separated by an acid film. I played around for a couple of days trying different combinations, the funny thing once it had flipped you had to decrease the concentration by about 20% before it would flip back.

This is because there is not enough current flowing through the coils probably 20 - 25 Amps. the solenoid is just sitting there, eventually it melts the 15 Amp fuse. The coils are designed to draw over 50 Amps but going through the ignition switch even a clean one you will be lucky to get 30 Amps barely enough to encourage the solenoid to move. The strength of an electromagnet is proportional to the number of turns x the current flow so at 20 Amps its only pulling at 40% of its design strength. The dashboard lights dim because you are pulling a lot of current through the switch and the contact resistance is dropping the Voltage, if you clean the contacts you will find it improves. After a few years the Vaseline in the switch gets hard and tends to hold the contacts apart, On a cold day it will be even worse because the vaseline is even harder. Clean the old vaseline out and replace it you will notice a vast improvement. If you really want to fix it you need to provide a better source of 12 Volts to the start relay however with the later VIIs you can't just feed 12 Volts from the battery to the start relay as you can with most other Guzzi because the Normally closed 87A contact goes to the headlight. There's another easy way and thats to add another relay with the contact between the large live terminal and the spade connector, The new relay coil is triggered by the original wire that went to the solenoid spade, you also need to ground the other coil connection. Now all your switch has to supply is about 150 milliamps, the solenoid will pull ~ 60 Amps and the starter will perform how it was designed to. Notes: A fuse is optional, it should be 20 Amps because you have doubled the solenoid current. Although the current is much higher the duration is much shorter so it doesn't have time to heat the fuse (typical 15 milliseconds at 50 Amps then it drops back to 10 Amps) The starter designer never intended it to be installed the way Guzzi do it.

This is a very good explanation of the bullet connector problem, My 01 VII Sport would suffer occasionally but it never got so bad I had to fix it.

That was a lucky find, I remember Docc telling us about that years ago. The two bullet connectors (60) connected to the clutch switch (17), I think that's a common fault. Also on high milage bikes the wires work harden and snap under the insulation where they constantly bend back and forth around the headstock, you can find the broken ones by pulling hard on them one at a time, if they stretch the copper core is broken.

The starter solenoid will draw at least 30 Amps while it is pulling the gear into mesh, I doubt any of the wiring is up to that, first off they start with a 15 Amp fuse then send the juice all the way to the front of the bike and through some tiny wires to the ignition switch and back, I doubt the ignition switch is rated at much more than 10 Amps and it increases in resistance with age as the grease goes hard. When you do a Startus Interuptus fix you bypass all this wiring and the solenoid will likely draw 50 Amps and operate 5 times as fast engaging with a healthy clunk. The fix most recommended was to feed the starter relay with a feed direct from the battery through a fuse bypassing the ignition switch, this caused a few problems for owners not familiar with wiring, Lately I have been suggesting adding an extra relay mounted near the starter, one side of the contact is fed from the large live terminal, the other contact goes to the solenoid spade terminal. The original trigger wire goes to the new relay coil while the other coil terminal is grounded. Doing it this way the bikes loom stays original, no logic is changed.

I don't know of any grease that actually conducts electricity, take your multimeter on Ohms and see, take a picture and post it here if you find a conductor. Vaseline has been used by electricians for 100 years or more, its especially good on battery terminals and ground connections, what it does is protect the metal from Oxygen, no Oxygen = no Lead Oxide. Lead Oxide is an insulator, you can prove this to yourself by touching your Volt meter leads to the battery posts, chances are if you haven't scraped them clean you won't get a connection until you jab the terminals through the oxide layer, on moving contacts Vaseline lubricates the contacts to stop them wearing. I swear by this stuff, I never work on bike electrics without it. I dip wire in it before I crimp a lug on, they never corrode that way. Actually any grease will deter lead oxide formation, Vaseline is cleaner than most. I wouldn't use Dielectric grease i've seen too many bad reports on it, I have no personal experience because I never use it, I believe its good for plug leads however, I would use it there. The starter current doesn't pass through the ignition switch, it's the current to the starter solenoid coils this can be over 50 Amps for a split second. Once the solenoid pulls the gear into mesh and the main contacts close it drops to about 10 Amps. If your dash lights are dimming it's either too much resistance in the switch or a bad battery or ground connection. It could be the battery of course, the test below will check that. The easy way to troubleshoot the starter is to take a wire and touch one end to the solenoid spade connector and the other to battery positive, if it cranks that proves the battery and starter are both ok. Do this with a Voltmeter across the terminals and it should hold around 10 Volts while cranking. A word of warning, make sure the bike is in neutral or the starter will launch it.

I'm slowing down with age, probably take me 20 Remove the two Phillips screws that hold the switch onto the lock Tilt out the white contact plate by releasing the odd clip Wipe off the old grease with a shop towel Add fresh Vaseline Replace the contact plate Screw it back on While you are there fasten the wires where they come out the back cover so they don't flex at the solder joints and snap off. You should disconnect the battery Negative but I never do.

Startus Interuptus (solenoid clicking without turning) happens when the wiring cannot deliver enough current to the solenoids 2 coils so its not able to pull the gear into place. (the slow starter rotation is something else altogether as you have discovered) The early VIIs were wired with the battery going direct to the start relay so they had no problem delivering 50 Amps to the solenoid. Later bikes routed the start relay through the ignition switch, you are lucky to get 30 Amps through that wimpy device that's why it needs cleaning to make sure it can deliver maximum current. At 30 Amps it's only working at about 50%. The starter manufacturer never intended it to be wired that way, they want the solenoid current as high as possible, I sometimes wonder if the factory know how the solenoid works. For example try to find a factory drawing that shows two coils. Just about every other Guzzi model is also wired wrong, I see my 76 Convert has been corrected at some stage. Note this high current is only for a split second, just while the solenoid is moving, once the main contact closes the second coil is switched out and the coil current drops to ~ 10 Amps

I think these meters are based on a Hall Effect sensor, I will keep my eyes open for one, In the meantime I will measure my DC Amps with a shunt that cost me nothing to make, Guzzi Content. As an apprentice we had a DC clip meter that had an analog scale, it had zero wiring but relied solely on the magnetic field around a wire and had selectable ranges by taking one movement off and substituting a movement with different sensitivity, quite expensive though. You can increase the sensitivity of these meters by putting several turns of wire through the jaws, its a straight relationship between the number of turns and the reading. I like electrical meters and I have a few quite rare ones.

Yes, that's the other one, My VII Sport was grounded to thereat release switch, I noticed it was slow to crank one day but fortunately I figured out what it was before that happened.