Monday, January 16, 2012
Voltage regulator of my Suzuki broke down twice in one summer. At first, I had no idea something was wrong before the battery was empty. Second time the bike got really weird (video). Then I also noticed the changes in the brightness of neutral-light. You are good to go if you take the regulator off, but obviously the battery won't be recharged. I was able to drive from Haukipudas to Kemi (~90km) starting the engine four times - without the regulator - and reloaded the battery when I got there. I recommend to pack a back up battery when doing that. You can obviously take a lot longer trip with lights off, but that's not legal in Finland. If you have another biker with you, it's easy to swap the batteries of the two bikes every 100 kilometers if the batteries are the same size.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4k3rDQePjI&hl=en
