I just picked up a 96 cbr 600 today. This is my first bike. Im very knowledgeable about cars but know very little about these. Today, i was cruising around in a large parking lot to get the feel of the bike, and it died while idling. I had been riding it for about 45 minutes. When i tried to start it, there was nothing. We popped the clutch and it fired back up. 10 minutes later, same thing but popping the clutch wouldnt even start it this time. We jumped it and got it going for a couple minutes, and same thing again. The battery is brand new as of yesterday.
In a car i would say this is just a bad alternator, but i figured i would come here first since i dont know much about these bikes and what i should troubleshoot first. Thanks in advance for your help

 

Yeah sounds like the regulator to me, on the right side of the frame (rear), little black box. have a look to see if its fried any wires when gasped its last. Not always the case, Mine didn't, much has been written here about these bloody things & a fix. Which is either replacing the unit with an aftermarket heavy duty unit or with one from a Suzuki GSX.
So it would pay to do a search for the relevant info. They are the Achilles heal of the CBR (& VTR & VFR) They over heat & break down over time (varies with each bike) till they reach the terminal stage. Everyone assumes its the battery & forks out money on a new one.

 

Visually, the regulator looks fine. No fried wires, no cracks, nothing. Im not going to rule this out at all, but what other possibilities are there that would be wrong that would be easy to test?

 

95% sure it's the regulator. Same thing happened to me. Visually, nothing was wrong with the regulator, but after I replaced it, everything worked fine. I used a regulator off of a gixxer, works great.

 

Just got a new regulator today. Ill let u guys know if that fixes it when I get home

 

I put the new r/r in today and it's still not charging the battery. I found i have a direct short between power and ground. I have no idea how the bike even runs. I first found that i have continuity between the 3 yellow wires on the r/r plug, then after digging further i have continuity pos terminal on battery to frame and between pos and neg terminals on the battery, and when checking resistance between pos and neg on the battery it is 00.0. Could a bad stator cause shorting like this? or is this going to be a fun time of going thru the whole wiring harness to fix it? If thats the case I might just bring it to a shop and let them deal with it