Tips on Why Fuel Injected Harley Won’t Start

Hey, welcome to Fix My Hog. I'm Mike Roen. In this video, we're gonna do, just a kind of an overview or troubleshooting, because for your motorcycle, if it doesn't start, I get this phone call, probably, I don't know, 10 times at summer. And with the advent of the cell phone, it's always from somebody that's in Montana or Wyoming and they're on this big road trip and somebody's bike in the group. They tell me it won't start. Well, that opens up a whole box of questions for me to them, because I need to know well, does that mean when you turn the key on, is there power? You hit the starter button, does it turn over? Does it not turn over? You know, so it's just it opens up pandora box to all these questions. So you might get this call from your buddy or your significant other and you're gonna be going through the same thing, you're gonna have to tell him to calm down and just think basic stuff. Because believe it or not, I've had to go to the local tavern and pick up a good customers motorcycle because he says, hey, I came up, my bike won't run. I said, this guy's a good customer. He's only a couple miles away. I said, you know what, I'm gonna hook up my truck. I'm gonna bring the trailer down there. I grabbed the bike, I roll it in the trailer, I turn the key on, I flipped the emergency stop, switch to run, hit the button, the motorcycle fires up. He looks at me says wow, well, what do you do? What do you touch? I said, nothing, I just turn the shutoff switch on. He's like I never used that. I said, well, it was shut off today for whatever reason somebody walked by, you know, it's parked in front of a bar. And so it's just simple things like that, you know, and this guy said, you know what, I'm gonna bring it back to the shop anyway, cause he probably maybe shouldn't have been riding his motorcycle. So that's kind of stuff you gotta think of the next big deal is I've trolled a lot of bikes back to the shop, because they didn't switch to reserve that's going back to the carburetor days. And it's easy to do, because somebody will fill the tank. They don't realize that they went out and put 100 miles on on a Friday night reppin around the cities, and it's easy to do. So they get down to that reserve mark, it runs out of gas, they're not even thinking that they need to go to reserve because they just filled up. So simple stuff. Now with these new motorcycles, they all have security. And that's a big problem because if they bought the bike used, they're not really familiar with how the security fob works. Oh seven and later, this fob is always talking to this motorcycle. It's just sucking the life out of this battery. I tell people carry a spare battery for your fob replace it every spring and I had another guy I almost trailered his bike to the shop because he called up said it was flashing when it started I said no big deal put a battery in your fob. Put a battery in your fob still flashing. I hung up the phone I was getting ready to go pick up the bike. And I called him back I said did you put the battery in the right way, you know what he didn't he put it in upside down. So he put a new battery in upside down and the motorcycle wouldn't start simple stuff cause when your motorcycle doesn't start you lose your mind. You're just you're freaking out, because you're far away from home. So you forget about all these basic little things you gotta check on. Another thing is you know, the other next thing is obviously gonna be a battery you know now whether the motorcycles just charging or you've got an old battery in it, and it's just succumb to heat. And that's it I didn't get to give you no more you go out start the bike, nothing. You might just be that simple as you might need a new battery. Now what I've been seeing a lot of lately or actually for the last I don't know 15 years. This people run out and they buy themselves a cheap batteries somewhere. And because of the patent Harley had on their batteries, they had to have a little standoff on there. So some of them come with this little brass spacer. Some of them come with a little round thing and it makes the battery cable have to stand away from the terminal. The engines rubber mounted motorcycle shakes, the cables come loose. Now you got a problem. You go to turn the key on you hit the button, it just clicks sounds terrible. So click click click it sounds like a dead battery. There again, it's just as simple as your battery cables are loose while you're tightening up your battery cables. I mean if obviously if you remember this website, you're doing pretty much all your routine maintenance. Every time you do an oil change. Check your battery cables, see if they're tight, simple stuff. While you're tightening the battery cable, you can follow that cable down and make sure it's tight on the other end, whether it's the ground or going to the starter. If you've got a 2004, road King with 120,000 miles on it, you should just probably put new battery cables on it, there's gonna come a point in its life when it's gonna deteriorate. And you're gonna need new items like that. Plug wires, holds your bike, put them on, they're cheap. Over the winter, you kind of think about things like that. You look at the longevity and say, you know what, I've had these plug wires on it for 80,000 miles, I'm just putting new plug wires on it. Crank position sensor, it's really easy to replace, but it can bite you at any time I've seen them fail at 30,000 miles, I've seen them just go to 120,000. But if you're prepping your bike over the winter, and you're like, hey, I can buy a crank position sensor for 60 bucks, it takes me 20 minutes to put it on. Put one in eliminate a problem for the summer, you've got a known good spare that works. You can keep it in your saddlebags. So it's just you know, stuff like that you can save the day. You know, if you're out in Sturgis and somebody crank sensor goes out, you go, hey, guess what, I've got one, you plug it in the guy's bike, you're the hero. Next up, bikes probably gonna give you a trouble code. If it's not running, or it's not running properly. We've got videos on how to retrieve the trouble codes out of the trip meter, you know, through your motorcycle, depending on what year it is, the procedure could vary. It'll say it in your owner's manual, it'll say it in service manual. So not a bad idea to carry the owner's manual with. And I guess while we're on that subject, know your PIN number, you know if you've got security, and let's just say you lose your fob or your fob goes bad for whatever reason, you're locked out of your motorcycle, you don't know your PIN number, you're on the trailer. So if you know your PIN number, boom, boom, boom, you're back on the road. Another thing, these bikes, they've got the Jiffy stand switch that switches down, motorcycle isn't gonna start, you're just little things like that if the bikes in gear, people hitting the button, you gotta pull it in the clutch, you know, ideally, I'd like to start my motorcycle in neutral, it's just harder on the whole starter drive. When you turn the key on, and I'd say about 90% of the motorcycles on the road now are fuel injected, you can listen for that fuel pump, you can hear that thing cycle it does that brief little cycle, that's a good sign your fuel pumps working. If you don't hear that, that's a good place to start. So what do you do? Let's look at the fuses. You know, if you don't have a test slate, maybe go up to the auto parts store get one start checking your fuses power on both sides, it's gonna be a process of elimination. So it's gonna come down to what your problem is, and what's going on with your bike. You know, get the service manual, they've got a pretty decent guide in there of which direction to go on what scenario you have, or what problem you have. All I'm trying to do is just kind of go over the basic stuff, cause like I said, I get this phone call a lot. I mean, if you got a motorcycle and you think you hurt the motor, you know, there ain't gonna be much you can do on the road, you know, if the exhaust valve stuck in the exhaust guide, and it bent the valve and it sounds weird when you go to run it. I've had people break valve springs and ride them in on one cylinder. It's riding on one because nobody's home on one of the cylinders. You're not fixing that on the road, you're putting on a trailer and boom, that's it. So stuff like that, you know, at the end of the day, think about it, what do you really need, you need compression, you need fuel. And you need spark and that spark has to be at the right time. So it's the basics, but you're gonna be limited and when you're road tripping or whatever it is, you know, and that's unfortunate, it always seems to be like when you're far far away from home, or somebody calls you far far away from home, but at least you can help this person with these questions. So let's just take a little bit of my notes here. That's really about it. I mean, you know, if you got the manual, go over all the basics, and kind of just keep your cool cause it's just I've seen so many people do things that you know, they've trailered their bikes, so many distances for problems that are very minimal, you know. Okay, so remember, just keep it simple. Keep with the basics, battery, battery cables, fuel, shutoff switch, your fob, stuff like that. I mean, reach out to a friend somebody's got a manual try and talk you through it, but for the most part, it's gonna be basic stuff. And if you can't figure it out from there, you're on the trailer. So, alright, I hope you found this informational. Thanks for tuning in and ride safe.