‘He simply taped over the warning light and kept riding. For TWO years!’
Neil Sawbridge had his work cut out sorting the ABS on this Goldwing
When Neil Sawbridge at Doncaster Motorcycles got this Honda GL1800 in, the owner was at his wits’ end with the ABS system. The bike had stood idle for a time before he got it, and the ABS warning light was flashing. Sawbridge explained: “If you don’t change the brake fluid regularly, the modulators that sit at the front of the fairing can seize. They are sealed units so they can’t be serviced or repaired. He’d bled the system without any joy, and another mechanic had a look at it, but gave up. So he had simply taped over the ABS warning light and kept on riding it. For two years!”
When Neil got the bike in, he couldn’t even get a fault code to show up, although the light was shining. Without a fault code Neil had no choice but to chase the wiring and check each connection. “There are quite a few connections for the ABS, and some simply need unplugging, while others need unclipping. When I saw the screwdriver marks on the first ones I looked at, I knew a ‘pub mechanic’ had been messing about.”
The ABS control unit sits above the air filter and it looked like it had been yanked around too. When Neil carefully got it out, he could see the problem.
“During routine services sometimes people are lazy and just pull the ABS control unit to one side to get at the airbox, but this looked like someone had ragged away at it, and they’d damaged one of the control unit pins, which just so happened to be the one that reads any faults from the modulator.”
Once that was reconnected Neil was able to identify which of the modulators was playing up, and source a new one for £150. “With Goldwings, 90% of fault codes are either from poorly fitted accessories. Or those pub mechanics.”
‘90% of faults are from poorly fitted extras or those pub mechanics’