Dead Diavel.

Gimlet

Gimlet

Elite Member
Subscriber
Wonder if anyone can help, maybe @West Cork Paul or @Nelly .

Went to clean my Diavel today. Wheeled it out of the lockup but didn't start it as I only rode it last weekend. Gave the bike a good wash. No pressure washer two inches away from switchgear of electrics. Just a gentle hosepipe shower on the lower part of the bike to wash off the worst of the dust - wheels, swinging arm, radiator, undercarriage etc and a soapy cloth on the rest. Same as I've done many times before.

Dried 0ff with a bike dryer as usual. When I went to start the bike to drive water from the radiator and engine, which I always do, ignition was dead. Hit the main switch and nothing. Screen remained black, no lights, stepper motors spooling, just like the battery had been disconnected.
I wondered whether the battery was flat so plugged in the Optimiser. Left hand big green light on, smaller yellow and orange lights at the bottom of the display flashing intermittently. As far as I'm aware that's either a dead battery or a very low one and it's doing a recovery cycle. Bike hadn't been left on charge but as I say I rode it only last Sunday and did some 250 miles so it should have been well charged.

Then I noticed an odd thing. While the screen is black and there's no response from hitting the main ignition switch I saw that the backlights to the switch gear on the right hand handlebar block (kill switch, engine start, steering lock button etc) were on. When I pressed the steering lock button the backlights go out until I release it.

I'm assuming there's been water ingress to the right hand switch block, though I don't see why that should cause the charger to detect a flat battery. I did an internet search and did read of problems with water and the kill switch on the 1260 Multi, which I assume has the same switchgear, causing similar symptoms.
I've dried the switch block from the outside but I can't for the life of me see how to separate the switch block itself and remove it to dry the inside. There are two pozi screws but they only split the throttle cam and RBW wiring (which was bone dry). I can't see how the electrical block, which is separate, comes apart at all.

Can anyone help?
 
This might help with the switch dismantling ....



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Apologies for asking stupid questions but have you checked the obvious such as kill switch in correct position, bike is in gear or battery not properly connected?
I have suffered all 3 at various times and spent ages looking till checking the above.
 
May indeed be the battery. A month ago I'd done a 60 mile run on my Scrambler. Two days later I was going out on it again, pressed the starter and all I got was a click. Battery was dead. Same happened to me with a car a few years ago. I was using if daily with a 30 mile round trip to work and back every weekday. On leaving work one day the battery was dead.
Modern batteries often seem to fail suddenly.
 
Nelly said:
Have you tried the hands free by pass? The push button that then needs the PIN.
Or try the key next to the antenna under the seat
Click to expand...
I looked it up in the manual (much trawling, as like most Euro bike owner's manuals there is no index - you just have to guess). There were about six pages on hands-free, as far as I could see repeating the same thing in pidgin English over and over again. Basically - as far as I could see you take off the screen, hold each key over the sensor and that's supposed to let you in. It made no difference.
Whether it has a PIN I've no idea since that would have been set at point of registration by the original owner and naturally Ducati Sunderland where I bought it, if they had that information, chose not to share it.
Even so, if hands-free or PIN access was required to by-pass the immobiliser the dash should still have come to life, either to allow me to select "key on" or Key off" or to enter a PIN. It doesn't. The bike is dead and the right-hand cluster's backlights are still lit and my Optimiser is still telling me the battery is dead when logically it can't be..

I just want to get it going and get rid of it. I'm sick of these constant electronic gremlins with these idiotic Gen Z throwaway electro bikes; a manual that doesn't help you and endless hours of my life wasted trawling Google watching kack-handed youtube vids on how to get a simple component apart. I'm done. I'm going back to real bikes. The Diavel is gone as soon as I can get it going.
 
Derek said:
May indeed be the battery. A month ago I'd done a 60 mile run on my Scrambler. Two days later I was going out on it again, pressed the starter and all I got was a click. Battery was dead. Same happened to me with a car a few years ago. I was using if daily with a 30 mile round trip to work and back every weekday. On leaving work one day the battery was dead.
Modern batteries often seem to fail suddenly.
Click to expand...
You could be right. But the only way to find out is buy a £90 battery and hope for the best, It seems odd that it has worked perfectly until I passed a damp sponge over the handlebars. If that's the case the bike is unusable and un-ownable. Not worth the garage space. As above, I want a bike that works; that I can switch on, start, fuck off on and will still work tomorrow without an app of a day wasted on the internet. Once it's working, it's gone.
 
Exige said:
I have a nice 1098R for sale - proper bike :love:
Click to expand...
Not interested. Unusable sports bikes bore me rigid and I want to ride my bikes, not polish them and put them under heated blankets.
If the company still existed and wasn't owned by Chinky communist Guinnesss I'd buy another KTM 990. I know them inside out, they're analogue, the manual tells you how to strip the entire bike down to the last nut and bolt on the side of the road and put it back together again - and even supplied the tool kit to do it.
Decision made. When this piece of shit is running again it's up for sale and I'll get a real bike you can actually ride, not a rich old man's throwaway toy.
 
Alan Williams said:
Is it an Optimate ?

I had a flat battery and the optimate did nothing with it.

Put it on a cheap trickle charger for a couple of hours then back on the optimate which fully charged it.

The battery didn’t last long after that though.
Click to expand...
I did put it on a proper Ring car charger and the lights said it wasn't charging. Flicked it onto boost. charge light came on but still nothing.
Bike is six years old and hasn't done 10,000 miles. Done with it. I've owned Morris Marinas that did better than that.
 
Gimlet said:
I did put it on a proper Ring car charger and the lights said it wasn't charging. Flicked it onto boost. charge light came on but still nothing.
Bike is six years old and hasn't done 10,000 miles. Done with it. I've owned Morris Marinas that did better than that.
Click to expand...
When do you think you might make up your mind about keeping it or not?

Barry might want to put in a bid.
 
Gimlet said:
I did put it on a proper Ring car charger and the lights said it wasn't charging. Flicked it onto boost. charge light came on but still nothing.
Bike is six years old and hasn't done 10,000 miles. Done with it. I've owned Morris Marinas that did better than that.
Click to expand...
To be fair, 6 years was always a good average for battery life so it may just be naturally expired. Have you nothing to boost it with?
 
Gimlet said:
Not interested. Unusable sports bikes bore me rigid and I want to ride my bikes, not polish them and put them under heated blankets.
If the company still existed and wasn't owned by Chinky communist Guinnesss I'd buy another KTM 990. I know them inside out, they're analogue, the manual tells you how to strip the entire bike down to the last nut and bolt on the side of the road and put it back together again - and even supplied the tool kit to do it.
Decision made. When this piece of shit is running again it's up for sale and I'll get a real bike you can actually ride, not a rich old man's throwaway toy.
Click to expand...

Jim

I've a fully charged Shorai LiPo battery in the garage. I can have a run up to you, if you want to connect it to see if your battery is the issue before shelling out wonga.
 
Gimlet said:
I looked it up in the manual (much trawling, as like most Euro bike owner's manuals there is no index - you just have to guess). There were about six pages on hands-free, as far as I could see repeating the same thing in pidgin English over and over again. Basically - as far as I could see you take off the screen, hold each key over the sensor and that's supposed to let you in. It made no difference.
Whether it has a PIN I've no idea since that would have been set at point of registration by the original owner and naturally Ducati Sunderland where I bought it, if they had that information, chose not to share it.
Even so, if hands-free or PIN access was required to by-pass the immobiliser the dash should still have come to life, either to allow me to select "key on" or Key off" or to enter a PIN. It doesn't. The bike is dead and the right-hand cluster's backlights are still lit and my Optimiser is still telling me the battery is dead when logically it can't be..

I just want to get it going and get rid of it. I'm sick of these constant electronic gremlins with these idiotic Gen Z throwaway electro bikes; a manual that doesn't help you and endless hours of my life wasted trawling Google watching kack-handed youtube vids on how to get a simple component apart. I'm done. I'm going back to real bikes. The Diavel is gone as soon as I can get it going.
Click to expand...
What year is the bike?
Regarding the PIN…..no one will know it apart from previous owner. There is a reset procedure that will allow you to enter your own once it’s sorted. Dealer should know this
 
Robarano said:
Jim

I've a fully charged Shorai LiPo battery in the garage. I can have a run up to you, if you want to connect it to see if your battery is the issue before shelling out wonga.
Click to expand...
Cheers Rob. Haven't looked at it today yet. It's been on the Optimiser over night. If it's still the same I'll put a tester on the battery. Unless the battery reads near zero I don't think that's the problem as even if it's low it should have enough to wake the bike up and show a low battery warning.
I suspect something's goosed in the right hand switch block from water ingress. The right hand cluster backlights being permanently on is suspicious. Probably the key-on/key-off button which according to a trawl of the forums yesterday has a pcb in it. Apparently they're £300. If that's the case the bike's of the road till the spring and then it's going on Autotrader. A bike that can't handle getting wet is really of no use to me.
 
Nelly said:
If you remove the lower belly pan cover, where the battery is, you'll see the starter solenoid. There's a white 4 pole connector plugged into it. Have a look at that for water/corrosion. It acts as a power distribution point, prior to the fuse boxes.
Click to expand...
Hey nelly!!! How are ya bro? Do ya do house calls? Fancy coming to NZ and fixing the 900 ss? Its an electric issue so ya wont need to bring all ya kit
 
Barry Hell said:
To be fair, 6 years was always a good average for battery life so it may just be naturally expired. Have you nothing to boost it with?
Click to expand...

Nelly said:
If you remove the lower belly pan cover, where the battery is, you'll see the starter solenoid. There's a white 4 pole connector plugged into it. Have a look at that for water/corrosion. It acts as a power distribution point, prior to the fuse boxes.
Click to expand...

Tried the bike this morning and ignition came on and it fired up no problem. Presumably water ingress the and it must have dried out in the hot temperatures.
Or partially dried out because two or three times while it was ticking over it just stopped and screen went black like the ignition had been switched off.

Pissed off with it and it being too hot to tinker with it I jumped in the car with the aircon on and took a trip down to Ducati Sunderland. Amazingly I was able to speal to a bloke called Stu (not our Elsie Stu, this was a much younger man with no tassels) and he was extremely helpful.
He agreed with Halle Berry that at 6 years old the battery was long on the tooth so I've got a multimeter and I'll take the side panel off and check the output and that solenoid connector for corrosion.

He did say though that he'd be 90% certain the problem was water on the right hand switch block. We went down to the workshop and he showed me a stack of them he had on the bench, mostly from V4s. Very common problem apparently. They're not £300 as internet land said. They're £140 + VAT which is still enough.
I'm going to pull the cable connector out of the side and spray the whole lot with water dispersant and contact cleaner. Then I'll check the battery output and connectors down there for corrosion.

What I still don't understand is that the Optimate charger thinks the battery is dead. It clearly isn't because it cranked the engine no problem several times. I'm just wondering whether if the connector by the solenoid that @Nelly mentioned is corroded, would that stop the charger connecting to the battery given that I've only connected it through the charge cable that hangs down by the rear brake. I haven't connected it with crocodile clips direct to the terminal. If there is a problem in that block connector, would it stop the charger from being able to read the battery?
 
Gimlet said:
Tried the bike this morning and ignition came on and it fired up no problem. Presumably water ingress the and it must have dried out in the hot temperatures.
Or partially dried out because two or three times while it was ticking over it just stopped and screen went black like the ignition had been switched off.

Pissed off with it and it being too hot to tinker with it I jumped in the car with the aircon on and took a trip down to Ducati Sunderland. Amazingly I was able to speal to a bloke called Stu (not our Elsie Stu, this was a much younger man with no tassels) and he was extremely helpful.
He agreed with Halle Berry that at 6 years old the battery was long on the tooth so I've got a multimeter and I'll take the side panel off and check the output and that solenoid connector for corrosion.

He did say though that he'd be 90% certain the problem was water on the right hand switch block. We went down to the workshop and he showed me a stack of them he had on the bench, mostly from V4s. Very common problem apparently. They're not £300 as internet land said. They're £140 + VAT which is still enough.
I'm going to pull the cable connector out of the side and spray the whole lot with water dispersant and contact cleaner. Then I'll check the battery output and connectors down there for corrosion.

What I still don't understand is that the Optimate charger thinks the battery is dead. It clearly isn't because it cranked the engine no problem several times. I'm just wondering whether if the connector by the solenoid that @Nelly mentioned is corroded, would that stop the charger connecting to the battery given that I've only connected it through the charge cable that hangs down by the rear brake. I haven't connected it with crocodile clips direct to the terminal. If there is a problem in that block connector, would it stop the charger from being able to read the battery?
Click to expand...
Im no electricity guy but i would say if there was a problem with that connector it would cause an issue with the charger...
 
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