My bike is trying to kill me!
 

Help needed with this one. My bike tried to do me a nasty at the weekend. It was giving me powerful electric shocks through the brake and clutch levers - the fact that this coincided with descending steep hills and my back brake boiling really didn't help. It got to the point when it was easier to kill the engine and roll down the hill and hopefully bump the bike before I needed power.

The obvious culprit would be the HT lead but it looks OK. Anything else I should check? There is a small black rectangular component mounted in front of the coil that was hanging on its wires but it looks to be low voltage rather than HT so I don't think that is the problem.

http://www.gasgasrider.org/forum/showthread.php?t=22038

http://www.gasgasrider.org/forum/showthread.php?t=15227

Thanks Neil

I know it isn't the brake switch as that is already disconnected.

It could be the kill switch but it was only happening down steep hills. It is also very dry here in Cyprus, at least until around December - jut as well by the sound of it.

If the primary to the coil runs at 200V my money is on whatever the black component is that is flapping around in front of the coil knocking against the frame and causing a short. If it was an old points system my money would be on that being a condenser - is it some kind of RF suppressor?

That component is most likely your voltage regulator. It is normally grounded to the frame so it will clip excess voltage from the lighting windings. It would drop ~60VAC to ~13VAC. I believe the older units are single wire plus frame ground. Maybe the newer ones are two wire devices. I expect that one of your device wires would be attached to ground.

That could be it. I'll make sure everything is secure. Perhaps it was knocking into the HT wire because I was getting quite a jolt.