Today I had a great 400km ride, stopped in to see a few folks, and was returning home in the dark. I noticed the red battery light came on. Bummer I thought, running on battery power. I had about 7km to go though town, so thought "well I wounder how much battery power I have?". Best to just keep going. Then the light went out. Beauty, I'm going to make it. Then I stopped at a set of traffic lights. The dash area filled up with foul smelling smoke. Gosh, I said (PC for F***ing hell!😯 I'm on fire).

I turned the bike off to the left and pulled up the Team Moto Yamaha drive way, pissing smoke everywhere (Something ironic going on there, as the superbike's yamaha flogged the 1198 in South Aust races today.) I shut it down. Got off, helmet off and sat and watched my machine shrouded in smoke. Literally I thought well that's a hell of lot time and money going up in smoke. (It pays to joke in a crisis I find). So had a little chuckle at my joke, then ripped of gloves and yammed my hand down the mouth at the front of the RR tank, which had that characteristic expensive orange glow (flames) going on by now. I ripped out the front Uni filter foam pod, which was melting and smoldering. A bloke and his wife mysteriously appeared and asked if I need help. Water would be good about now. His wife shot off, and I ripped the foam filter apart and rammed my hand back into the fires of hell and started muffing out the flames from the now clearly obviously burning Reg-Rectifier. It seemed to stopping the flame bit, but not the smoke. The guys wife came back with a large cup of water. I poured it all over the place, and it seemed to sort it out . I turned thanked them had a bit of a chat, them whoosh like a genie out of a bottle, it was off again. I whipped of the bum pad and ripped out all the fuses and relays, to stop power, then tried the battery (too hard for the Swiss army knife Philips head attachment). Fearing the Carbon fiber 3 piece air box was alight, I then, like a rat up a drain, off to where wife had found the water. I raced into the Pizza shop, 2 young kids. Dived into the fridge an grabbed a large bottle of 7UP , looked at them an said "Bikes on fire I need this now. Then ran out. I got the expected Oi! Ran back in gave them my bag and said bikes on fire going now. Ran back around the corner to see more clouds of smoke pissing out with orange. I took off the lid, gave it a shake and stuck my finger in the hole and let rip. The fire went out again and cooled down the reg enough for me to get in with blade of the Swiss army knife. I cut the molten wires and disarmed the offending reg-rec. I couldn't pull the plug as I'd strapped it together after my last little red dash light episode. Crisis over the guy and his wife and 2 other blokes that had come to watch my bike burn, wandered off.

I sat down had a fag and phoned the wife, and had a drink off my fire extinguisher ($3.98 I found out later.Bargain!Fire and thirst quencher.😁 ). An ambulance then came screaming down the road sirens blazing. Turned right, and shot off. Then came back turned right and when blazing passed me. Then came back turned left, and took off. Wow how strange, I mentioned to the misses, as I gazed at a cop car at the lights. I started to turn my head to where the ambulance has mistakenly gone for some bazaar reason, and Wham! 2 cars slam into each other about 10 meters from me. The wife went what the F was that. A car smash I replied, got to go. Before I could get up another car pulled up, Out jumped an off duty Ambulance driver still in his uniform. Really getting weird now. No screaming, no rushing, so everything was fine other than the 2 small totaled jap cars.

Then cops and ambulances and fire trucks all turned up. I called a tow truck as I need one. A girl got a stretcher ride and the other boys stood around. The scene cleared, the guys tow truck turned, my tow truck turned up. My tow truck guy sussed out the scene, scored the other car tow job from the cops, and as a result only charged me half tow fee.

The end result is a smelly dirty bike with 7Up all over and probably down into the cylinder. A totally dysfunctional reg-rec, some cut wires. One slightly gashed and bleeding, slightly burnt right hand. The blisters on the finger pads are not too bad, years of depressurizing hot jet engine gear boxes with out a glove toughened them up. Tomorrow I’ll inspect the rest of the story. I did get to enjoy a great ride, I find that comforting. 😁

Griff

PS My conclusion at the moment is the Headlight current draw caused too much heat for the poor old original reg-rec to handle. Have to fix that.

PPS What is annoying is I have a little Al plate that sits behind the reg-rec, sitting on the bench, that I almost got around to sticking on.