Well……it finally happened

S

ssrrxx

New member
Joined
Jan 4, 2010
Messages
339
Location
Wisconsin
Well, after 17 yrs and almost 15,000 miles, my 98 SRX couldn't make it home for the first time. Usually I'm the one pulling sleds back, but this night it just didn't have it in it. Now I'm not complained at all, it's going to happen sooner or later. It's been a GREAT sled.

Here's the scoop, my wife and I were out on our date night, having a great time, making good time as trails were great. Leaving a local establishment, we jump on our sleds, half a pull my sled starts right up, I put my helmet on and my sled dies. Huh……… it's never done that before. Half a pull and its back to idling nicely. 30 secs. later it dies again. This time no restart, lost all spark. I start with the obvious stuff, key, kill switch, all connections , nothing loose or dirty. We tow the sled home and I tear into it last night. Pull the harness, no rub thru's, as I just fixed one a couple years ago. But I did find a plug cap that had a hole burned all the way thru the neck where the wire connects. I've never seen one do that before. My wife said she could smell a slight burning smell from my sled at a previous stop, but I couldn't smell anything. Shows my sense of smell. These stock caps were only a couple years old. Maybe 2000 miles on them.

Anyway, I'll start testing the kill switch, key switch, and stator when I find a thread with the info. Could a bad cap take out a stator or CDI ? Any other advise I'm not thinking of?

Thanks

EDIT: One more thing, it seemed the headlights would have a very slight flicker, dimming once in awhile. Just barely noticeable, it was hard to notice as it was snowing pretty good. Other than that, this sled had no other issues, ran great.

EDIT#2: One more thing, if I let the sled sit awhile, maybe 30 minutes, on the first pull I get a very weak spark, nothing on the next pulls.
 
Last edited:
Any chance that with the hood closed, you had something rubbing on that plug cap where it burned thru? And then when it rubbed thin enough, the spark was able to jump to a piece of metal, like the hood cable, or wiring, or?

Other than your switch tests noted above, or a loose wiring connection or bad ground (I believe there is a ground on the steering hoop area somewhere behind the secondary clutch), I'd be very suspicious of the stator. There seems to be quite a few of them going bad these days, and both your EDIT's as well as your run/die problem sure sound like they could be stator issues.
 
It sounds just like when my stator pooched dim light and would fire only when cold.Was my first breakdown as well.Let us know
 
Thanks for the replys guys, here's the update.

Stator checked out good, all readings were low, but I'm attributing that to checking the stator cold. I threw alittle heat on it, and readings started to climb. Then started looking over the harness again, got to the CDI and there it was, one brown wire rubbed thru and was grounding out on the footwell. Pulled it away, threw the recoil back on temporarily, one pull and SHAZAM, we got spark back. Thanks for the help, gotta love this forum.

Tomorrow we ride
 
It seems its not a matter of IF you will experience a wiring issue on our SRXs its a matter of WHEN.
My 2002 SRX shorted out in the headlight wiring harness a while back and had to be limped home.
 
Yeah, that's so true. It's just that I should have looked the harness over better, knowing very well the reputation these have for rub thru's. You'd think I'd learn.

Still, gotta love an easy fix. Should be good for another 5-10k lol.

Also, does or has anyone every see that happen to a plug cap? And what would cause that? As stated above in the second post, I checked and nothing comes close to the cap to rub it when the hoods closed, maybe it was defective from the start, that internal threaded post was still in the wire, other parts fell out when I pulled the cap off the wire.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, I'm getting tired of always wrenching on this thing. Seems like every 6000 to 7000 miles something goes wrong lol.

On a side more, I just got it buttoned up and took it for a spin. Idles much smoother, and seems to start easier. I ended up replacing all 3 caps with NGK's. But now we're stuck in this warm front for the next few days. Hoping the trails hold up.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


Back
Top