J&M radio pharqueing up my electrics

[urloozn]

Hello boys and girls! Here is a copy of the letter I just sent to J&M regarding the trouble the 'Bird is having. I tried to be as thorough as I could:

Hello! I'll try to keep this short but there is a lot of information to relay. I have a 1999 Honda CBR1100XX Blackbird that I recently put a JMCB-2003-DU radio on. It is powered through a relay that fires with with the ignition through the license plate light. It worked fine for a while but has started to give me some problems. My wife complained that while slowly rolling into a parking lot the bike stalled when she keyed the mike (obvously not on VOX.) I thought she was crazy but I decided to check the system out anyway. All of my connections were soldered and still intact with no arcing evident. All wires had good continuity. I put a meter on the battery and ran the engine up to about 3000rpms. It was making about 14.1 volts. If I kept it at that speed and keyed the mike it would drop about .1 volts until she actually spoke into the headset. At that point the battery would drop to about 5 volts and the engine would stutter/stall. Since the battery is about 3 years old I thought it might be toast so I removed it and had it checked. Just as I thought, bad battery. So I bought a new battery and tried it again. This time it only dropped to about 9.5 volts but when I transmitted I lost all power to my instruments (Needles all went to zero and even the clock went dead.) As soon as I released the button the instuments all went back to their correct state. The Honda VFR and Blackbird are both known for eating regulator/rectifiers over time so I checked that component as well. The continuity was good everywhere but the regulator plug was a little yellowed and looked as if it had gotten quite hot in the past (remember, this is a 10 year old bike with 60k on it.) My question to you is twofold: First, have you ever heard of any problems like this before? Second, would these symptoms be indicative of a bad reg/rec? The instruments on the 'bird are all electronic. They function in the millivolt range and are susceptible to interference. I thought that since this is such a powerful radio that it may be interfering with the electronics in the dash. Both radio and dash should be shielded and it shouldn't affect each other, but the possibility is there. If the regulator is faulty then the voltage spikes or the inability to maintain voltage during a load could be the culprit. Any and all advice will be appreciated!

So what do ya'll think? The regulator checked out but as I mentioned the yellow plug was a little burnt and showed signs of having gotten really hot in the past. I thought I would get info from all angles before I shelled another $150 for another component that still doesn't fix the problem. Also, is it really worth it to do the R1 swap? And is it even possible for the '99 to do that? I've only heard of it with the carbureted models. So let the bad/good advice fly!

[Skull]

My experience is that J&M has miserable customer service and most likely will ignore you.

[RichardCranium]

Hello boys and girls! Here is a copy of the letter I just sent to J&M regarding the trouble the 'Bird is having. I tried to be as thorough as I could:

Hello! I'll try to keep this short but there is a lot of information to relay. I have a 1999 Honda CBR1100XX Blackbird that I recently put a JMCB-2003-DU radio on. It is powered through a relay that fires with with the ignition through the license plate light. It worked fine for a while but has started to give me some problems. My wife complained that while slowly rolling into a parking lot the bike stalled when she keyed the mike (obvously not on VOX.) I thought she was crazy but I decided to check the system out anyway. All of my connections were soldered and still intact with no arcing evident. All wires had good continuity. I put a meter on the battery and ran the engine up to about 3000rpms. It was making about 14.1 volts. If I kept it at that speed and keyed the mike it would drop about .1 volts until she actually spoke into the headset. At that point the battery would drop to about 5 volts and the engine would stutter/stall. Since the battery is about 3 years old I thought it might be toast so I removed it and had it checked. Just as I thought, bad battery. So I bought a new battery and tried it again. This time it only dropped to about 9.5 volts but when I transmitted I lost all power to my instruments (Needles all went to zero and even the clock went dead.) As soon as I released the button the instuments all went back to their correct state. The Honda VFR and Blackbird are both known for eating regulator/rectifiers over time so I checked that component as well. The continuity was good everywhere but the regulator plug was a little yellowed and looked as if it had gotten quite hot in the past (remember, this is a 10 year old bike with 60k on it.) My question to you is twofold: First, have you ever heard of any problems like this before? Second, would these symptoms be indicative of a bad reg/rec? The instruments on the 'bird are all electronic. They function in the millivolt range and are susceptible to interference. I thought that since this is such a powerful radio that it may be interfering with the electronics in the dash. Both radio and dash should be shielded and it shouldn't affect each other, but the possibility is there. If the regulator is faulty then the voltage spikes or the inability to maintain voltage during a load could be the culprit. Any and all advice will be appreciated!

So what do ya'll think? The regulator checked out but as I mentioned the yellow plug was a little burnt and showed signs of having gotten really hot in the past. I thought I would get info from all angles before I shelled another $150 for another component that still doesn't fix the problem. Also, is it really worth it to do the R1 swap? And is it even possible for the '99 to do that? I've only heard of it with the carbureted models. So let the bad/good advice fly!

I would really be surprised if its the radio but I guess stranger things have happened. The reg/rec seems likely and IMO worth buying another for two reasons. One you can absolutely verify that the reg/rec is or is not the problem. Two, we should all have a spare. I have been meaning to order on forever. Its pretty much the only part that fails on the XX and definitely worth having a spare on a road trip.