Battery drain

[Guest]

So after a successful day of getting the bike running after its 7 year sleep, I went out to start it after supper. No go. Battery was down to 12.3 v and not enough juice to even turn it over. The battery is out of the 650 and is in good shape as far as I know. It has been charged and discharged fully many times but I don't believe its defective and i haven't seen it drop that low that quickly.

I'm kind of confused because when it was running this morning it was over 13 volts to start and at idle was charging as verified by a cross pole check on the battery with the multi meter. Something is draining it at rest????

I'm having a hard time understanding this as I can't see anything running that would draw down the battery that quickly.

I have the trickle on it now and will ceck again in the am. This kind of takes the shine off the good luck of getting it running today.

I guess its all part and parcel of working with old scoots, however.

Love the sound of that 16 valve mill running so I need to figure this out. Any thoughts guys?

Cheers,
Spyug.

[Steve]

12.3 volts is not all that bad, but one other thing you said has me concerned. "It has been charged and discharged fully many times but I don't believe its defective" Depending on how deeply it was discharged, it will never come back to full capacity. Actually, depending on how the battery was charged before putting it into service, it may have never reached full capacity to start with. How old is the battery? With that many charge/deep discharge cycles, it is probably wasted by now, regardless of age.

Is your trickle charger manual or automatic? Your best bet is a charger/maintainer that will take it to a full charge, then shut off, not just back off to a trickle. It monitors voltage and comes back on if necessary. It is a great item for winter storage.

One other thing to consider. When you turn it off, what position do you leave the key in? Hopefully, it is not the PARK position. That leaves the tail lights on, which will drain the battery rather quickly.


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[spyug]

Steve,
Thanks for the reply and suggestions.I went out to check the key position and on a whim turned it on, pulled in the choke and thumbed the button. She started right up. The voltage was showing at 12.7 across the battery with the charger connected. On the 650 12.5 or less and they won't fire so I imagine it might be the same with the beefier GS so I wasn't surprised it wouldn't crank.

I think I'm looking at a weak ground scenario. On our 650 board one of our experts ( Curly...God bless him) always has us focus on the quality of our grounds. Good clean shiny metal to metal. Without a good ground the circuit is not complete and things won't happen as they should.

During the next few days I'll go over renewing the grounds and connections in general. Electrics are usually the weak point on the UJM.

Thanks for making me go check. I feel better now.

Cheers,
Spyug.

[KnuckleBuster]

Check out my post - http://www.thegsresources.com/_forum...d.php?t=109020

I've been fighting dead batteries for a couple of years. Just because it's up to 12 volts when you check it, doesn't mean it stays there when you hit the starter. If the battery has been drained slowly and deeply, it may charge up great, but have no umph when you put a load on it. The best thing to do, just to be sure about the battery, is to check it with a load tester. It will show voltage with and without a load - mine was 11.8 without a load, but when you put a little draw on it, it dropped down to 3.6 volts - hardly enough to turn the starter.

Good luck,
Jay

[tconroy]

I just went thru this on my bike. It may say 12.5 volts at surface charge but under a load it will turn to crap quickly.Take it to the auto parts store and have it load tested.Mine held a chrage over noght but would not stay charged on the bike.I just bought a new battery and everything is fine.batteries do whatever they want and sometime will fool into believing they are good.After riding around they should show at least 12.6 volts after cooling off for a couple of hours.

[spyug]

Thanks for the info guys. I hadn't thought of a load test. I have a new battery on order for the bike so I'll take this one in for a test when I pick it up.

Cheers,
Spyug.

[tconroy]

I buy mine at the Advance auto store. I got it for 28 bucks on sale this week and 6 bucks off for core charge.My last one lasted 2 years.thats only 14 bucks a year.Your only going to get 1 or 2 years out of a bike battery anyway.

[spyug]

Checked the battery first thing this am and the charge was down to 12.6 volts from about 13.4 last night at midnight when I unhooked the charger.
Enough juice to start the bike but a definite sign of a problem with it Ithink.

It does confirm something for me. This battery was originally in my XS and I had noticed when starting it ( the XS) recently my voltage gauge didn't show it charging but if i shut it off and restarted it would usually jump up into the high 13 or low 14 volt indicating a good charging system. I had assumed it was my reg/rectifier or stator brushes but I'm now thinking the battery is dying.

New battery coming Monday but i likely should get a new one for the XS as well. Mind you at about$70 CDN a pop i might have to defer 'til next payday.

Thanks all and cheers,
Spyug.

[spyug]

Had a bad day of trying to get the bike to run so I think I'm doomed to pull the carbs and clean them afterall.

After an easy start yesterday I couldn't get the bike to start and run properly today. Eventually got going but wouldn't run off choke even when warm. Would sometime start on choke but die off after a few minutes. Symptoms seemed to change every few minutes. At one point got it to run off choke but when I twisted the throttle would only go to 5k and stumbled all the way up. It felt like it was only running on 3 cylinders. the more I played the worse it got and I finally gave up in frustration. I gave up for today.

I'll read up on the carb removal procedure tonight and will try and get them out tomorrow.

I'm kinda bummed as I thought I would be able to get this bike road worthy with a lot less effort than others I've done. I have a plan to get it certified in the next week or so, so I need to get right on it.

Wish me luck.

Cheers,
Spyug.

[tconroy]

If you want to try a quick fix take the bowls off and spray the jets and pickup tubes with carb cleaner and clean out the bowls.Also spray down the fuel line.Then get some deep creep sea foam spray and spray down the fuel line before putting it on the tank.Depending on how long the bike has sat it my just do the trick. one of my pickup tubes in the carbs had a peice of crud stuck on it that it tried to suck up from the bowl and killed one of my cylinders.After spring it out it has ran fine ever since.It doesnt take much more than a spec of crud to cause problems.