Charging Issues
 

Hi all,

So I recently acquired a 2001 F4i, and am in the process of fixing things here and there to get it up to snuff. It seems to run fine, but the battery keeps dying on me. It would start up fine, but after riding around it would refuse to crank again. I have a battery charger that can "recondition" batteries, so I tried doing that to it, but it still wouldn't hold a charge, even from just not being used for a few days. I figured the battery that it came with was pretty much toast, and bought a new one. It starts up and holds a charge fine, but now there's another issue. When I start it up, I get a nice healthy 14ish volts at idle, down to about 13.5 with the high beam turned on. But then, after its warmed up, the moment I touch the throttle, the light dims a little and the voltage at the battery drops to around 12ish..it doesn't matter if I blip the throttle or take my hand off of it, it still keeps draining as long as its running. If I turn the bike off and back on again (and don't touch the throttle), it goes right back to charging happily. And so on and so forth. I'm guessing its a bad rectifier/regulator, but I'm curious what you guys think, or if anyone has experienced anything like this. Thanks in advance.

i would concur with your conclusion

thanks chetman. Anyone else have input?

from what ive read on here i would agree with what your thinking as well

Always worth 5 minutes to have the battery tested before you go any further. I just replaced mine because it was several years old and I haven't had historically good luck with these little batteries. If the battery is questionable spring the $50.