I am an idiot.. A no start story

Ezayakyala said:

Heading home from a glorious 2nd ride of the season. Wife texts me and asks me to pick up steaks for a stir fry. Why not? The grocery store is right there on the way home. I jump off my bike skip into the store.. find some good looking meat and realize I am going to have to stick this into my jacket to get home. Not an issue… it’s a 5 minute ride home. The steak will be fine. I get back out click the bike on as i always do and hit the starter .. the bike just blinks red at me… WTF? .. how could this happen. This bike has never let me down… hmmm.. try emergency start procedure.. does not work. Is my battery dead? I treat this battery better than my body. Always plugged in to a tender and parked in a heated garage. No way its a bad battery i think.

Luckily I am in the parking lot with a Canadian Tire in it. I always keep a screw driver in my tool bag. Pop the battery out head into Canadian tire. With a sheepish look on my face. They test my battery. It says the battery is faulty. Yay I am saved. They spend 10 minutes looking for a battery that matches. The steak in my jacket is about 30 minutes old. We find a battery hooray ! But wait I have to stand in line to pay for it.. get the receipt validated and come back and pick it up. Steak timer is at 40 minutes by the time I pick up my battery.

Head back to the bike.. Have a hell of a time getting the nuts in the battery without them wanting to slide out. Get everything plugged in. Moment of truth. NO START. Red light blinking mockingly at me. Steak timer 1 hour.

I look at some videos on YouTube… Emergency start needs the spare key and the saddle bag mounts might be in the way so my FOB is not getting close enough. This is a brand new battery… did the alarm system crap out? Then I notice someone saying something about turning the FOB on and off by pressing the Triumph Logo. He said it went from Red to Green meaning it was off. I look at my FOB and point it to the sky.. by the power of Greyskull … I press the button.. .Red to Green.

Bike Starts.. Steak timer is at 1 hour and 45 minutes. I put the steak in the garbage and head home. At least I have a new Battery.

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CrzystghndKC said:

Those steaks would have been fine.

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Gimlet said:

Existential question: if you didn't know you had to wake up the key fob to start the bike, how did you ever start it in the first place?

First alert I had on my R3 when I bought it was "Key fob battery low". I now have a battery-for-life card from Timpsons (UK riders will know what I mean).

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DesertRat said:

You shouldn't Abuse your Meat.....especially in Public

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Journeyman said:

I bought the bike used. I guess it was shipped with the FOB still turned on. I never turn it off and the battery still lasts a very long time. Not sure of the purpose, really. None of my cars have on/off switches. The bike did come with a manual, but I've always been of the "reading the manual is the last resort" school of thought- but, then again, look where that got me...

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Ward said:

It doesn't turn itself off, but leaving it on constantly emits a signal that the bike searches for. Eventually the battery in the fob will fail and the bike won't be able to find it. It should still function as the spare does though in the emergency start procedure.

A friend of mine collected a new Storm GT last year, and I went with him. On the handover, the sales woman had no idea what the spare keys did, or what the emergency start procedure was. I had to show them. Take the battery out of the fob, and try the emergency start procedure with the "dead" fob ? It would of course mean that you don't have to carry a spare key for emergency use ?

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