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Power/No power??

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260SCRMR:
I have a real puzzler. We were on a weekend trip this last weekend. We left Friday morning around 8:00 am and made a couple stops before stopping for lunch about 2:00 in the afternoon. I hit the fob to lock the bags and got nothing so thought I had a dead fob battery so I flipped ignition on to use the dash switch and had nothing there either. No dash lights nothing at all. I hadn't had anything like that before so thought I'd let it sit while ordering lunch then come back and check. After I came out to check it about 15 minutes later still nothing. Even though the bike was dead I thought it might be my lucky day because there was a HD dealer less than 2 miles away. I called the dealer and they sent a tech out with another battery hoping that would be the problem. We dropped the battery in hooked the cables back up and it fired right up. It still seemed odd to me that I had no indication of battery problems, my charging system is working fine, and all of a sudden I have a dead bike after half a day of riding, but it was the original battery and the bike was running again so I paid he $180 and figured it could have been a lot worse 300 miles from home and we took off again. We didn't have any more problems the rest of the weekend or since....until tonight. I went out to take a ride into town. I turned on the ignition, waited for the fuel pump, hit the starter got a click, then nothing. No dash lights again, everything's dead. I put a multi tester on and had 13 v. I pulled the cables again, touched the cables to my battery charger turned on the ignition switch and had power. Put it all back together, seat back on, turned on the ignition, nothing again. Besides the 2 bike cables I also have the 2 leads for the battery tender pigtail and 2 other leads that get power to my connector at the rear for my trailer. So I'm thinking I'll only hook up the bike cables and see if that makes any difference. I put it all back together with just the bike cables and now it's all working, at least tonight. I don't know why the trailer connector leads would affect getting power to the bike or even how they work, but since I left them off I don't have any lights on the trailer now. Sorry for the long message, but has anyone heard of anything like this before? :confused5:

cvobiker:
maybe you have a short in the trailer leads thats drawing your battery weak or dead  :nixweiss: or it sounds like something somewhere is doing the same.... i hate electrical problems, sometimes they can drive you crazy or to  :drink:

Dan_Lockwood:
Just a couple quick checks that might be done.

When you hook up the battery cables with all things turned off on the bike, there should not be any spark when attaching the cable.  This would be a gross short.

Most guys will have a 12v test light of some sort.  To light the 12v bulb, it takes a bit of juice from the battery.  With one cable disconnected, clamp one end of the 12v test light to the cable end and then the test light pointer onto the battery terminal.  If you light the 12v bulb, you have a short significant enough to run down your battery over night or not much longer than that.  If you have enough of a draw on the battery to light the 12v light, start pulling one fuse at a time.  If when pulling out a fuse the light stays on, plug back in the fuse and move to another one.  If you're lucky enough to pull a fuse and the test light goes out, you've found the draw.  Now you can back track on that circuit to find your problem.

This is just a very light electrical 101 suggestion, but it's worked for me many times over lots of years.

Good luck.

260SCRMR:
Thanks for the suggestions, but the strange part of this is that the battery isn't dead. I didn't know that the first time it happened when we replaced the battery, because the HD tech never tested the battery, but when it happened the other night the battery still had 13v on it and I never had to charge the battery. I just unhooked the trailer wiring and tender leads and it was fine all day yesterday. I did take a look at the trailer wiring last night and it's a regular harness with a relay with fused power leads to the battery and trigger leads that plug into the rear light harness on the bike. Everything looks good, I didn't find and thing unusual. I'm not an electical engineer, but it seems that even if there was a problem with the trailer wiring it still shouldn't prevent getting power to the bike if it's got a fully charged battery and the connections are all good.

260SCRMR:
Well, it cost me a $70 tow charge to a dealer in Sioux Falls SD on the way to Sturgis to find the cause of my no power problem. It was a loose battery cable connection AT THE STARTER! In case anyone else ever has an absolute no power problem it would be something to check. The power goes to the starter before the rest of the bike. A loose connection at the starter is just like a loose connection at the battery.
  Now I have a different problem that I never had before. Sometimes when starting the bike I get just a "click" when I hit the start switch. Sometimes I'll have to hit the switch 3-4 times before it finelly turns over and starts. It happened several times over the 10 day trip, but never left me stranded. I just got home and haven't talked to my dealer about it yet. Anyone have any ideas?
 

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