ER 6n display problem

[Taff]

I've just started the wife's (2006) ER6n or if the back of the garage and started it for the first time in about a year, it fired up straight away and sat there idling quite nicely, the display is backlit properly but there's nothing on the display and the rev counter doesn't work.
The bike has only done about 3k miles and only been in the rain when caught out.

All the other lights and stuff on the display works properly, indicators, main beam etc but no speedo or trip milage.

I've pulled all of the surrounding plastics off and the electrical connectors are clean as a whistle, all the fuses are good, no sign of rodent damage as far as I can see.

Anyone seen this sort of thing before?

[Count Steer]

Anyone seen this sort of thing before?

Only on older displays that had got waaay too cold. I think that's not a problem with modern displays though.

[Taff]

Short video, I've never seen anything like this before

[Big Red]

Not seen on this model but have has similar on other bikes which was down to dirty contacts in the ignition switch.
Give the switch a good spray with spray lubricant and work/wiggle the key in/out and around.

[Taff]

Not seen on this model but have has similar on other bikes which was down to dirty contacts in the ignition switch.
Give the switch a good spray with spray lubricant and work/wiggle the key in/out and around.

The ignition switch really is a bit stiff, what lube can be used on leccy switches & locks?

[Big Red]

Not seen on this model but have has similar on other bikes which was down to dirty contacts in the ignition switch.
Give the switch a good spray with spray lubricant and work/wiggle the key in/out and around.

The ignition switch really is a bit stiff, what lube can be used on leccy switches & locks?

Something along the lines of gt85, wurth 2040 etc.

Worse case wd40 but there are better available.

[wull]

WD40 is absolutely fine to use, no worse than the others mentioned.

I’m guessing you don’t have a manual? As has been mentioned check all connectors etc including grounds, make sure the earths are good.

[KungFooBob]

I've never seen a bike deteriorate as quickly as my wife's ER6F.

Set it on fire, claim on the insurance, buy a Honda.

[Taff]

just to close off this thread in case someone has the same problem in the future and comes searching..

I took the switch assembly apart and it was spotless (this included a quick lesson on how far a ball bearing is propelled when it's released from teh spring pressure that helps it do its job), the connection on the back of the clock was also spotless so the problem looked like it was deffo in the clocks themselves. Because of the silly low milage on this bike (3200 miles on a 2006 bike) I really didn't want to buy an ebay / scrapper part because the milage would be much much higher and they were all about £250 anyway.

so I sent them off to https://www.autotronics.co.uk/, 10 days later and £250 its all sorted with a warranty.

[Taff]

The saga continues.

A few days after refitting the clocks I went to take the bike for it's MOT and lo and behold, they weren't working again. I sent them back to autotronics who repaired them again and sent them back to me today.

So I bunged them back on and rung the garage to book the MOT this afternoon.

Pulling the bike out of the garage I had a bit of a faf and left the bike running for a couple of minutes, by the time I got back to the bike the clocks had stopped working again. Fortunately our CCTV caught what the clocks were doing while my back was turned, and it looks very much like a power supply problem, possibly the earth??
At one point you can see the clocks jump back into life when I touch the back of the bike.

I need to get all technical to find the problem before I dare to plug the clocks in again.

The quality on the vid is a bit grainy because I've zoomed in as far as I can get away with

[wull]

Get the schematics and start tracing wires, like I said above check all earths and continuity etc etc, you know the script.

I’m guessing you’ve got a multimeter?

[Taff]

Get the schematics and start tracing wires, like I said above check all earths and continuity etc etc, you know the script.

I’m guessing you’ve got a multimeter?

I'm planning on rigging up a light bulb to the power supply pins on the bike side of the connector and then trace the loom all the way back, hopefully I'll be able to get the light bulb flashing when I get to the loose connection.

I aint plugging in the clocks again until I know what's causing it, I think I was lucky that autotronics fixed them FOC the second time, I really doubt they would do that again

[Count Steer]

Q? When you say Autotronics fixed it twice, what was the actual problem? ie what did they fix? Knowing what the problem was might help diagnosing the cause. Did they say why it might have happened?

[Taff]

Q? When you say Autotronics fixed it twice, what was the actual problem? ie what did they fix? Knowing what the problem was might help diagnosing the cause. Did they say why it might have happened?

I tried to ask them, but tbh, telling me which pcb component had been replaced wouldn't have helped me at all because I just don't understand it. They did say that the repairs were different each time, a single fault the first and two faults the second, and the best thing to do now is to check the loom.

they also sent me a picture showing the pins to put 12v on to power up the clocks, which works atm, and I've found a kawasaki manual with other test procedures for the clocks etc.
so monday will be mostly poking and prodding the loom, and when I get bored with that I've got a radiator leak to fix on the tiger

[Count Steer]

Yeah, PCBs are just witchcraft really. I just thought that there might be common reasons why components fail. Intuitively, a drop in voltage shouldn't hurt but I did wonder if an sudden applied over-voltage might fritz them ie a capacitor discharge or dodgy reg/rec or something. Maybe run it with the multimeter on the 12v supply to the clocks and see if it's stable. Sod's law with an intermittent fault though - it won't happen when being observed.

[Taff]

agreed. the first thing I did was check the bike voltage when running which was a steady 14.6v at idle, dropping slightly to 14.4 at higher revs so that should be perfectly fine. The last time they popped I had an ancient optimate on the battery so I did wonder if that gave a spike in voltage, but again, I think that the clocks should protect themselves from that.

I will try and measure the supply voltage with it running and see what happens

[Taff]

I spent some time prodding about the connector with a multimeter and found that the ecu output on the Tacho pin is not what I think it should be, according to the manual it should be 0 - 12v square wave but I'm reading anything between 0 and 6.8v, I did get 12v for a while on friday but at that point I hadn't worked out what pin did what.
Contrasting this to the speedo which should be a 0-5v square wave and I'm getting a rock solid 4.8v.

an ebay special ecu is on its way from a breakers.