Re: Bike won't start and it did yesterday. Leave in 5 days for a 1700 mile round trip
FOUND IT!!!!!! It was the battery. My 3 year old sealed battery I, let's just say, expected to go a bit longer than that. How do I know this.
When I had it all assembled from my bare handed, 45 degree weather rummage sale, I have a float charger that was on the KZ and it was time to transfer it to the pig tail on the ST. I wonder, what could the state of charge in the battery be, JUST OUT OF CURIOSITY..
12.19 volts????
I know it's cold but what??
Check again, sometimes dufus doesn't have the leads on good enough....11.9, what??
Come on, clean it up man, get a good connection, now what. 12.52, ok whatever. Why not let's turn on the ignition, while your holding the voltmeter on the battery leads JUST TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS RIGHT?
Any guesses? 54mv. For those of you who don't know how to use a voltmeter yet, that's coded for trouble with a 12 volt battery.
Ok, let's continue the sillyness, turn the key off, the battery voltage returned to 12.5. I have never seen this. I know there's a difference between potential voltage and amps. Amps be gone, the battery is toastolla.
To further drive home the point, and for your entertainment, I hooked up a battery charger to the bike and the electrical system comes alive as it should. The bike won't turn over as the charger lacks the amps for the start function, but with proper juice it does everything else consistently.
So now it's off to the battery store to have it tested and likely replaced with the inconsistent voltages, load and no load.
Without having it tested yet, it explains a lot of the inconsistent behavior of when it got around to joining me. The turning of the bars all the way to right just jostled the battery to make a connection, then no turning of the starter. Well, that's enough for now. What a major hassle, and likely fooling some of my other members with it ending up being the battery, when so many of these symptoms are other electrical components.