Check Engine Ligth and Dash Flickering

Here's a bit of back story: I had just purchased a heated jacket liner over the weekend. I wired the power chord to the battery and tested it out during the Monday AM commute. Everything worked as it should.

Today (Tuesday) AM is the second day testing it. I had turned on the liner right when I left the house. The Check Engine Light came about a mile in, when I stopped at the light. This is the first time it had came on so I was a bit puzzled. After getting on the freeway, the dash started flickering, like the electric power was cutting in and out. That really freaked me out...

I thought maybe the heated liner was causing the problem. I unplugged it from the controller all together. The problem persisted for the remaining 5 miles to the parking garage. But thee time I got to the parking spot, the flickering had stopped but the check engine light is still on. I turned the bike off and started it back up, just see if the light would come on again. It didn't.

On the way home, I didn't use the heated liner. Everything was just fine. I then stopped by the store to pick up a couple of things. When I came out, it started raining pretty good. I thought I'd tried out the heated liner again. Before I could leave the parking lot, the check engine light lit up and dash started flickering... Hmmmmmm

Another side note, I have a HID headlight kit put in.

Anyway, I am really puzzled. I think the NCX produces plenty of electrical power to run the liner plus more. Would it be a bad battery not holding enough charge? I did have the battery die on me over a long weekend without riding. Maybe that's the culprit? Thoughts?

Tony

Loose battery connection? If I recall correctly I think that has caused your symptoms before with some other guys here. They did something with the battery (either added wires for a battery tender pig tail or something else) and after that they saw the check engine light coming on or flickering. After some more checking around it usually was that on of the battery connections weren't tight causing a low voltage or amp trip for CEL.

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Good idea. Let me go check on that.

I did a thread search for Check Engine Light but it was a different cause and solution.

I used the advanced search looking up Keyword "battery" with tag of "check engine light" and found this thread. It was the only one to come up in the search results.

http://nc700-forum.com/forum/nc700-technical/4043-sporatic-check-engine-light.html

There it was a loose positive battery cable connection.

I'm not sure which parameters the check engine light is looking for, but I wouldn't be surprised if low voltage is one. A loose battery terminal would cause low voltage, but also too much current draw by accessories. And although this shouldn't be a problem with our newer NC700's, but over time the charging output can suffer due to dirty connections that drop voltage (this is a problem on my 90,000 mile FJR that gets ridden all winter in the rain and will be fixed with a new harness from the rectifier to the battery over this winter).

I'm a big fan of installing a volt meter on bikes to monitor the charging system. Here's a good one: Waterproof Digital Voltmeter - ADVmonster
To ensure the battery is getting charged, keep the voltage at 13.2 volts or higher. When I'm riding my FJR in the winter with heated grips and heated liner on high with the high beams on, I can easily maintain charging. But the charging system provides less power at idle, so when I stop and the bike is idling and the fans kick on then the system voltage can drop to 12.8 which is not sustainable for an extended period of time.

+1 on a voltmeter, it was the very first thing I put on this moto, and all the other one's that I've owned. I tend to lean towards a loose battery connection over the heated gear causing the issue. And finally, it actually could be a problem with the bike and need to be looked at by a wrench.

On a side note, what HID did you put in, I had HID's in my last moto but it was a single filament bulb requirement for both the high and low beams (high beam opened up a mechanical lense) so I'm curious as to what you have.

+1on the weak connection. I run heated gloves, jacket, GPS, radio, cell phone and a ton of auxiliary lights on mine with no problems.