bike won't start. please help

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Mar 16, 2009 | 02:49 PM

nkettler

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bike won't start. please help

So I just went out to go for a ride and my bike won't start. It isn't cranking, it's just making that dead battery sound. I put the battery charger on it and it's only going to about 2 amps. Im not sure if its supposed to go higher than that?

I had it on about 20 minutes or so and still nothing. Does anybody know if it could be something else? Rectifier?

Please let me know what you think.

Thanks,

Nik

Mar 16, 2009 | 09:59 PM

nkettler

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I left the bike charging and finally around 4 p.m. today It slowly cranked over and started. I came back to the bike at about 8:30 tonight and it's dead again.

Any thoughts as to why it's not staying charged?

Thanks for your help

Mar 16, 2009 | 10:08 PM

pacemaker

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From: Newcastle, N.S.W. Australia

Usually have to trickle charge the battery for a good few hours. Could be the battery is cactus, but before you go out & get a new one have the reg checked. They are usually the culprit. Went through the same scenario with my bike (98 F3), went for the battery 1st, nope. So have it checked if you can, while the bike is warmed up, cos the reg falters & as they fail, it can be intermittent & if the bike is cold, then the fault may not show up on the meter. (Reg overheating causes them to fail).

Last edited by pacemaker; Mar 16, 2009 at 10:10 PM.

Mar 16, 2009 | 10:17 PM

nkettler

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Sorry, but what do you mean by trickle charging the battery? and also, how do you find out if the regulator is bad?

thanks for your help

Mar 16, 2009 | 10:48 PM

nessxp

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From: New York

Trickle is a constant low power charge, basicly keeping the battery topped off. Like a battery tender would do for the winter. It will charge the battery fully but it can take a very long time. Its like a .5 amp charge.
As for the regulator, im new lol ur guess good as myne

Mar 17, 2009 | 12:39 AM

nkettler

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Well thanks for your help, i appreciate it. I got it started about 30 min. ago after finally getting it charged enough.

something has to be draining the battery but im not sure what, and it is losing all of it's charge pretty fast. It has started up fine all the time until today when i went out to ride.
If anyone has ANY ideas what might cause this please let me know. thanks

Mar 17, 2009 | 03:32 AM

Hangfire

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Two tests, one requires a meter one doesn't. First ways easiest, charge the battery to the point that it will start the bike, then unhook the battery from the bike and let it sit a day or two unhooked. Now hook it back up and try to start the bike, if it won't start then the batteries toast. The other way is to take a multimeter, set it to current mode and connect it between the battery neg terminal and the neg battery wire with the bike off, see if there is any current flow. If there is then you can pull fuses till the current flatlines, gives you an idea of what the problem is. Note there should be a minor amount of flow, very little, due to the lcd display, clock, etc. But it should be only a few milliamps.

Personally I'd guess your battery is toast, try the first test and see what happens. Just replaced my battery, when I did the test I fully charged my battery, unhooked it and left it overnight. When I checked the voltage across the terminals the next day and it was zeroed, pretty easy to figure out it was a bad battery, happens more often than you'd think.