Do I Have a Spider Problem?

[Brodie]

I'm not saying it's disconnected, but I do see some shading on the corresponding pin in the picture of the connected recall harness. The same pin is colored differently in the close up picture; kind of amber-ish. It wouldn't be the first time a shady mechanic saved time by a quick click & shove job.

Brodie

 

[richsp51]

There's your smoking gun.

Or smoking connector as the case may be.

This is the first instance of a failed recall harness that I can remember seeing but it doesn't surprise me. You may or may not have any luck with Yamaha but it is worth a try. Perhaps they will replace the entire harness since the "patch" failed. This was supposed to be done if there was damage to the harness from a failed S4.

If no joy from Yamaha, I would just cut it off, solder the ends together and move on!

Glad you found it.

Ross, here's another incident that I found on the forum of a failed recall harness https://www.fjrforum.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=140271

I think I'll file a report with the NHTSA

I called Yamaha customer relations about my finding, same response as before... get it to a dealer to inspect and go from there. The agent I talked to didn't seem concerned that this is an apparent failure of a recall fix. He wasn't interested in documentation of my findings or helping to make any arrangements. Maybe I'm naive, but I expected more.

 

[Fred W]

Maybe I'm naive, but I expected more.

Seems to be an unfortunate trend.

 

[Viper Pilot]

How did the Gen 1's differ from the Gen 2 in this grounding area?

 

[RossKean]

How did the Gen 1's differ from the Gen 2 in this grounding area?

No similar issues in Gen I. Not to say that there can't be grounding issues but the earlier bikes did not use the "spiders" that have been problematic in some Gen II machines.

 

[Viper Pilot]

That's what I thought.

Thanks.

 

[audiowize]

Gen1 FTW.

 

[richsp51]

I have an update:

First, I completed the inspection of S7 and S8. S7 has a little bit of corrosion, but nothing too bad.

On Monday I had the bike towed to the Yamaha dealer that I originally spoke to for consistency since the Yamaha Customer Service rep. has previously made contact with this dealer about my issue.

I filed a report with the NHTSA this morning, complaint number 10899765. The basis for the complaint is that it's a failure of the fix from Manufacturer Recall Number 990061 ("Ground Joint Connector").

I'm now waiting the the dealer to do his "analysis" and get back to me.

 

[RossKean]

Even "slight" corrosion can be a problem. I had what appeared to be a slightly heat-tarnished leg on my S6 and it was enough to cause spider symptoms. It failed again a few weeks after cleaning it up.

 

[richsp51]

I have an update...

My bike's been at the dealer for more than a week now. I called them this morning to see if any progress had been made full well expecting to have to do battle. When I called the staffer who answered said that the service manager, John, was talking to Yamaha customer relations about my bike. He called me back about a half hour later.

Now for the NEWS... the service manager confirmed what I've been telling him since day 1, that the "main ground joint connector" (that's S4) failed and may have damaged the wiring harness. Yamaha has agreed to install a new main wiring harness per mfg recall no. 990062 at their cost! Yamaha is shipping one from California and work will commence at the dealership once it arrives.

Let me recap...

S4 has a pin that is intermittently shorting making a bad connection (correction by ionbeam/rosskean) causing heat, resulting in the scorch/burn marks on the female connector. You can't see it thru the recall harness connector. Pulling apart the connector revealed the damage. Note that this is the connector that Manufacturer Recall Number 990061 was suppose to fix! I can only speculate that when the recall was performed that it was either not done correctly(bad cable? not installed correctly?) or that the connector already had damage that was either undetected or ignored. At any rate, it's a FAILURE of a SAFETY RECALL !

Regards

Rich

 

[RossKean]

The pin is NOT shorting.

All of the wires feeding through that connector are common to each other and ground. The connection is heating up because of poor continuity due to oxidation/corrosion. The initial heating/oxidation was because too much current was being pushed through the "spider".

 

[ionbeam]

Let me recap...S4 has a pin that is intermittently shorting making a bad connection causing heat, resulting in the scorch/burn marks on the female connector.

Phixed.

Edit: I see Ross supplied the same info while I was typing.

 

[Harald]

There seems to be a rash of failed S4 spiders on bikes that supposedly had the recall done. I wonder if the recall was actually done on these bikes? I know of one instance where someone found the other end of the recall harness not connected, which would completely negate the benefits of the harness. Of course, as RossKean stated above, poor continuity could still affect the recall connection even if it was installed correctly.

 

[Fred W]

How did the Gen 1's differ from the Gen 2 in this grounding area?

Gen 1's did not have spiders at all. That "feature" was introduced in 2006, and carries on to today.

I think I can guess what is happening to cause S-4 to fail after the recall harness is installed:

The way that the S-4 spider is wired in the stock configuration, it has the common wire from 5 separate circuits (Radiator Fan #1, Radiator Fan #2, Grip Warmers (if present), Spider #3 and Spider #6) that are all tied to a single wire going back to battery negative (ground).

Likewise the two cascaded spiders #3 and #6 have 5 circuits ganged together, one on each being the ground going off to another pair of spiders #1 and #7, and #7 has yet another spider cascaded off of it, #8.

So, all of the ground currents for the entire bike eventually pass through one small pin of the S4 spider, and that was the one that would heat up, corrode, heat some more, and eventually burn up.

The recall "fix" was to add 5 ground wires to supplies a dedicated ground path for each of the 5 circuit pins in the S-4 spider (only). The problem with that fix is that one of those 5 pins carries all of the ground currents from Spiders S-6, S-7 and S-8 and those spiders have some significant current loads on them, specifically the two front headlamps (@100-110 watts), plus the front indicators, all of the handlebar switches, glove box solenoid which is always energized when the bike is on for a 2nd Gen or later, and the auxiliary socket in the glove box, so whatever you plug in there.

Even with a dedicated ground line for that pin, I'm guessing that is still too much current for the connection to withstand long term.

 

[wheatonFJR]

So we're doomed?

 

[Queensland Ken]

I did a theoretical calculation of the final current flowing through pin3 of the S4 spider,it was something like 56 amps through 16 gauge AWG, that's only 1.3mm CSA

For automotive wiring, the Current capacity of 16 AWG s around 22 amps, the only saving grace is that you not have everything on at once, and the short run of the neutral wire.

 

[ionbeam]

All the connectors in the ground system are fully populated (a pin in every hole) so adding a ground wire isn't simple. Ideally, you would want to run a separate #16 ground wire to each of the spiders, this would keep the current load on each connector down to a manageable amount and break the highly undesirable 'daisy chain' wiring from Yamaha. There are a couple of connectors that don't strictly have to have an extra ground run.

 

[richsp51]

There seems to be a rash of failed S4 spiders on bikes that supposedly had the recall done. I wonder if the recall was actually done on these bikes? I know of one instance where someone found the other end of the recall harness not connected, which would completely negate the benefits of the harness. Of course, as RossKean stated above, poor continuity could still affect the recall connection even if it was installed correctly.

In my case, I didn't check the the other end of the recall harness to see if it had been connected. Brodie had posted a comment just about the time I had my bike towed to check out to see if the harness had been connected, but it was too late for me to examine.

Thanks RossKean and ionbeam for correcting my sloppy statement about shorting.....right, they are common ground. As Fred pointed out the ground currents for the entire bike eventually pass through one pin of the S4 spider, and that was the one that would heat up, corrode, heat some more, and eventually fail. The failed pin in my photos corresponds to the same pin in photos of other posts with this failure (for example, see Brodies post #45 photo 2 in https://www.fjrforum.com/forum//index.php/topic/169278-my-07-feejer-stopped-running-after-dropping-it-off-ctr-stand-for-ride/page-3 )

Thanks to everyone for their help and suggestions.

 

[Fred W]

So maybe the failure of the recall was due to human error when installing the recall? That would be somewhat comforting.

On the other hand...

So we're doomed?

I'm afraid so, Mark. We're doomed and we're all going to die.

eventually.

 

[Fred W]

All the connectors in the ground system are fully populated (a pin in every hole) so adding a ground wire isn't simple. Ideally, you would want to run a separate #16 ground wire to each of the spiders, this would keep the current load on each connector down to a manageable amount and break the highly undesirable 'daisy chain' wiring from Yamaha. There are a couple of connectors that don't strictly have to have an extra ground run.

Probably the easier solution, and one that I think was being exploited by one of the early harness makers (Roadrunner maybe?) was to attach one larger gauge grounding wire to each of the heavy current metal spiders either via a mechanical connection or a high temp solder joint. At the same time clipping the cascading wires between the daisy chained spiders might make some sense to avoid ground loop issues?

It is a little mind boggling that the electrical engineer designers though this was a good idea to add to their product in 2006