last week Paul and i set off for Melbourne, planning to ride the ocean rd on the way over and the alpine country on the way home, visiting some family and friends in between.
as fate would have it, the weather forecast was for storms all the way over, but the gods were smiling so for the first time ever we saw clear skies for almost the whole ocean rd, with just a quick shower near torquay.
It was great to see Zio Guido and Zia Maria, Stef and Simon, and we also got a tour of the Mornington peninsula with friend Richard Clark, so we were feeling pretty good (if a little hungover) leaving Melbourne on Sunday morning headed to Bairnsdale.
BORING RIDE TO BAIRNSDALE! yawn.
We stopped for a quick bite just outside Bairnsdale but when we went to head off to tackle the snowy mountans highway betsy was out of electrical power.
flat battery or voltage regulator or alternator??
having replaced a couple of voltage regulators in the past i decided to pack a spare for the trip, so we limped back into Bairnsdale to swap them over.
In town we found an Autobahn shop where we picked up some terminals to make the job a little easier, and 10 mins later had the new reg plumbed in.
I also packed a set of jumper leads, so we jumped betsy off paul’s bike thinking we’d be good to go again.
nope, still no power from the charging system.
The good folks at Autobahn actually let me borrow a new voltmeter off the shelf, and with a bit of testing we diagnosed an alternator problem.
where there should be 50ish volts coming from each phase of the alternator, there was only 7 or 8v. Not good.
fried stator on ktm 950
So we packed up for the afternoon, found a pub and had a beer. We discussed options for trying to source a stator from Melbourne or getting the bike shipped back to Adelaide, but eventually decided to just see if it would keep running on 8v.
So in the morning i pulled every fuse out of betsy (except for ignition), disconnected the fuel pump and we set off with fingers crossed and an 8v trickle coming from the altrernator – destination Adelaide 1100km away!
So will a ktm 950 super enduro run with a burned out stator? Apparently it will.
We arrived home at 8:30pm, tired and bored, but it didn’t miss a beat.
Let me see you do that on your GS!
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