The answer to the initial question is "yes," Yamaha has to address the ignition failures with a fix or tell why they will not do so. Both NHTSA and corporate Yamaha are aware of the problem and in communication. The reason I can tell you this much and that Yamaha can't simply ignore the issue is because NHTSA opened an official investigation in August. This was mentioned previously in at least one prior thread.
Working with vehicle safety from another part of the Gummint, I can tell you that once these investigations get underway there are a lot of "intellectual rights" regulations and restrictions on us. Nobody at NHTSA will be able to tell you what is going on, even if you find them and no matter how badly you plead. These things happen at a level that a district rep or dealer just won't be aware of, so the District Rep probably replied as honestly as he could find out. However, once resolved by ANY means, a summary of the investigation results must be made public due to the freedom of information laws. Working with the same restrictions, I can tell you that the rules can make cases a pain to work on, but as a regular person, I'm glad to know they exist. At the same time, there is just nothing more that any of us in internet-land can do, with the following HUGE exception:
As mentioned many times now, the one thing that you can do if you have a failure is to go to www.safercar.gov (NHTSA's web-site) to get your problem recorded. Especially if you know of a 2008, log your failures!!!
The official NHTSA investigation only opened 3 months ago because so few people had logged their problems before that. Thanks to Barabus and the forum admins, NHTSA now has a stack of history to work with. My guess and the normal process would be for Yamaha to properly define the problem technically, do lab-work on failed parts, see how much of the fleet is affected, etc. IF they think this is bad enough to need to be addressed, the normal next steps would be to develop a design change, order parts for an estimated 20,000 motorcycles, figure out installation logistics, etc. Yamaha has been pretty good at responding to problems with ECUs, throttle position sensors, cracking top-case racks, etc, so I'd say they deserve a chance, especially now that they have NHTSA watching and the company knows that their results will be made public.
I have one of the affected 2007s, know how the system works from the inside, know how to find what is visible, & even know somebody involved. No matter which way this case gets closed, there is a group of us who will know fast, so the issue won't disappear and the results will ultimately get posted.
If you want an interim fix or are nervous in the mean-time, I think Brodie deserves a LOT of credit for developing a plug-n-play relay assembly, and especially for posting plans that just about anybody could follow in an evening.
Bob
