Battery Draining

[Do Little]

Alright, so I've been working on this bike forever, then bought another parts bike. I was originally having a lot of electrical issues, wouldn't charge and it was frying batteries. It would run down the batteries really quick, then they wouldn't fully charge again. So I get the new parts bike with good electronics and swapped out a bunch of electrical stuff. Had one of the old batteries on there with a decent charge on it, let it sit for a couple weeks with the key off. Come back to put a new battery in it, the old battery is stone dead. I don't know what caused it, could have just been the battery, but I'm paranoid after all the trouble I've had and want to check and see if my bike is sucking the battery dry while it's sitting. I'm 98% sure I have all the wiring hooked up right, everything appears to work and I can get it to start. I can't do the 5000 rpm charging system check because I'm waiting on money to get the carbs rejetted, which means it does not run/rev well. I'm fairly good with the physical aspect of electronics, like connections and wire conditions, but I'm not very knowledgable when it comes to stuff like circuits and voltmeter testing.

So is there any way I can test to see if my bike is pulling voltage while it's shutoff? Or see if when I turn the key on without starting the bike if maybe there's a short and it's pulling to much juice? Make sure to include what I should set my voltmeter to in your suggestions. Thank you.


And yes, I have read the Stator pages, I actually have a printed copy in the garage, but it does not cover this that I've seen.

[chuckycheese]

Stator

If it went totally dead in a couple of weeks while just sitting, the Stator Papers are a little premature. You've got some kind of a parasitic drain and you should have little problem figuring it out.

First of all, disconnect your battery and charge it up...and see it it holds a decent charge. If it does, reconnect it to your bike and you can figure out where you're losing 'juice'. I'd suggest you first disconnect your R/R and see if your battery holds a charge. That's oftentimes the culprit. If it does, you can pull fuses and go from there. It may take a day, or two, but you can figure it out pretty quickly.