Had a weird and slightly unnerving experience over the weekend.

Went out riding on Saturday evening. First I fuelled it up, and then hit the highway. As I was opening the bike up to 70 mph as the traffic cleared, a loud boom! went off. The engine died and the speedometer dropped to zero.

Then, just as suddenly, it fired up again and everything was fine. Only for the same to happen a couple of seconds later. Boom!, engine shut down, speedometer back to zero, and then all power back on again.

Was a bit nervous, as I had only just started on my ride towards the party venue some 25 km's away, and the (summer) sun was just dropping behind the horizon. Still had to get there, and then get back home at say midnight.

But luckily nothing happened after those two shocks. I cruised at 60 for a while, then opened her up to 75 again.

What could that be? First time I experienced this.

Nokka

 

What model and what year is your bike? Any Mods?

 

It's a 2009 Road King Classic, no mods, serviced a year ago.

 

Sounds like you got some water when you gased up

 

Would water bring down the speedo, I am thinking an electrical issue, loss of power would explain the "big bangs" as backfiring add fuel then spark at the wrong time, speedo is electronic so without power it would stop working as well. Check main fuse for corrosion.

 

the speedo dropping to zero is indicating power shut off. in addition to checking the main fuse, check your battery connections, at both ends of the cable, and also the cable condition.

 

Did you just get gas? If so that is what I would guess. It is hard to diagnose things like this on the net. Could be quite a few things.

 

Sounds like something is electrically loose. First, check that all of the fuses are seated properly. You might want to pull each fuse including the maxi fuse, to "exercise", or burnish the contact points. Move onto the large ECM connectors. Pull them apart and inspect for moisture or corrosion. Use dielectric grease to reassemble. If it still happens after that, I haven't got a clue.

 

Something similar happened to me last summer. I'd be riding along, and all of a sudden, the bike would backfire and lose power, and the speedo would shut off. When I pulled over to the side and started the bike back up, everything was fine. Traced the problem to a frayed battery cable. Got the electrical tape out and wrapped it up, and it's been fine ever since.

Check your connections and make sure they're tight.

 

Battery cable at battery. If it had done that, I would have gotten off the interstate and done some back street close to home driving. I doubt it was water. If so, there is probably still a lot left in tank floating on the bottom. If cables are tight, pulls some out from bottom of tank and place in clear jar and look at the bottom of jar for it.