So I've known my bike has had a weak/old battery for too long and was planning on riding it from my school in san diego to my home in santa barbara over winter break to get a new one in and do some more routine maintenance. Anyway, so I hadn't turned the bike on for two or three days when I drove down there to pick it up, of course it was dead, so I jump it, no problem, starts working again, my brother rides it around in a couple circles and so like five minutes later I shut it off because it was running out of fuel. I prepare for the journey home, then try to start it again, press the button, the engine turns over once.. and promptly dies. I try again, same thing. I then reattach the jumper cables, and after flipping the key to position, the only thing that turns on is the high beam indicator light on the cluster, which was on independent of where I had the high beam switch. I checked the fuses, they were all right, but didn't have much else on me to check anything before starting the long journey home.. Anyway, if I replaced the battery do you guys think it would turn on? Is this what happens when a battery completely dies or do I likely have wiring issues somewhere else?

 

it sounds like a dead battery

 

So even with jumper cables attached to a working battery, a completely dead battery will prevent anything from getting power? Just want to be 100% sure before convincing one of my friends to ride 220 miles with me then drive my car back after making a fool of myself like that once, heh.

 

Yeah, it depends on how dead the battery is. I drained mine COMPLETELY over winter, and it took like 20 minutes of being hooked up to a running utility vehicle on my buddy's farm before it even showed signs of life.

You really need to ride it around at higher RPMs for the stator to do any kind of recharging of the battery. A few circles in a neighborhood followed by idling won't give you much. So that on top of an already-pretty-dead battery is understandable.

 

^what he said

 

Mine died At Laconia sitting in traffic same problems and the the bike needs to be over 3500 rpm's for the stator to kick in. Switched in a new battery and it fixed everything.

 

Thanks for the replies everyone, I'll be swapping the battery and checking all my grounds if there's more ASAP (soon as I can convince one of my buddies to drive my car back up from San Diego if I can get it working lol).. And good call with checking the RR, how are the voltages supposed to be under each of those conditions?

 

Well apparently the electrical issues run deeper than I thought. I got down to San Diego today and hooked up the new battery, nothing happened, fixed the ground from the headlight and got the headlights and fuel pump working but no speedo/tack/odometer/blinkers/anything else, then somewhere around halfway home both the headlights and taillights went out.. Fortunately the fuel pump did not go out with the headlights this time and I somehow made it home before the bike gave out, now its time for some major electrical work (and looking at the engine while I have the bike apart). If only I could check the voltage at 2.5k and 5k RPMs! Hopefully it won't be too bad to get the speedo and tach back online (haven't looked at anything since getting home), but anyway, thanks for the advice everyone! Hopefully I'll be back on the road riding soon