| Author | Message | ||
     Richx186 |
01 lightning, keeps killing batteries, new ignition, new wiring harness, new voltage regulator, new stator, new ecm, when I'm riding bike it will just die, no warning or anything, pull over turn key off turn back on, everything lights up but weak, turn killswitch on everything shuts off, battery reads 12.5 volts, 0 amps. I love this bike and don't want to get rid of it. But I do want to ride, any help would be appreciated, this problem extends from last season if anyone remembers me haha | ||
| Natexlh1000 |
TEN!? Holy crap. Did you buy stock in the battery company? I have had AGM batteries die like you describe. With no load, they measure as fully charged but as soon as the headlight+ignition turns on, DEAD. Internal break in the battery causes this. I had two go this way. Once when I was riding and once really weirdly, I rode all the way to work, worked, came out at night and it was dead as described. Have you put a meter on the bike when it's running? Is your battery tied down correctly with the foam pad supporting it underneath? The battery that died on me while I was riding was installed wrong by a dumb dealership. Bumpy road+bad installation = fragged innards. | ||
| Richx186 |
YEA battery is clamped down tight. I'm wondering about bank angle sensor, that would shut my bike off while riding if it was bad but wouldn't kill the battery... | ||
| Kc_zombie |
Check the voltage while the bike is running and report back. | ||
| Richx186 |
You could put a new battery in it fire it up and everything will be fine, do all the electrical tests, stator, voltage regulator, everything will read good, will sit there and idle all day long. Go for a rip... Could be two miles down the rd.. I've gone as far as 800 miles before it killed a battery. Whatever it is, it's kills bike and battery. | ||
| Natexlh1000 |
You need to invest in one of those kuryakin LED things: https://www.amazon.com/Kuryakyn-4219-Chrome-L-E-D- Battery/dp/B000GU5WO8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=14937 57703&sr=8-1&keywords=motorcycle+voltmeter&refinem ents=p_89%3AKuryakyn That one is silly chrome but a black one lives on my Ulysses and it saved my ass. You could also go the temporary route and ductape a DVM to your bars as I did to catch my ironhead's intermittent issue. | ||
| Ocbueller |
Yes, led voltmeter on the handlebars where you can see it while riding. My X1 ate a few batteries till I found a bad ignition key switch. SteveH | ||
| Richx186 |
Okay but what is it Goin to tell me? The bike completely shuts off no power period. Only wen I turn the key off and back on again will there be a tiny bit of power. Enough to turn on gauges but not enough to turn on ecm, so what is this Gage going to tell me? | ||
| Jim2 |
A couple of things to check. One of your "new" everything is bad or not the correct item. The ground from your main circuit breaker to the frame is not part of the wiring harness. Is it good? Is the ground connection clean? That is a hidden ground that is hard to find and easy to miss. At least on my M2. I had a similar experience and I'm not certain what fixed it. I ended up replacing the VR, Stator, ignition switch, main circuit breaker, fixed grounds. I for sure had a break in the big power wire for the ignition switch. Multiple strands of the single wire were broken with only 1 or 2 still intact. The broken strands would bounce around and make and break contact. I for sure had the bad ground I mentioned from main breaker to frame. I for sure had a fried VR and bad stator but I don't know which problem caused which??? Also take care that you are not tightening the battery strap too much. You can put alot of pressure on that plastic battery case. Also take note that when I replaced my positive battery to starter cable, since it was new it didn't have the bends established. I ended up positioning the lead against the battery at a slightly different orientation and it allowed the bare end of the connection to sit just close enough to the metal battery strap to cause arching!!! I rotated it 90 degrees to cure that but put better shrink wrap to cover more of the connection too. I feel your pain. I fried three batteries but a full riding season went between the first and the second. Several months of riding between the second and third. After the third I decided I was going to cover everything with a fine toothed comb. I really think the AGM's are extremely sensitive to arcing and sparking. Get too close with a wrench - DEAD. Get the cheapest lead acid battery you can buy and use that until you find the issue. Best wishes for you. | ||
| Two_seasons |
I'd take a couple of those batteries over to a battery shop and have them tell you what they think caused them to fail. Maybe a peak inside could help. | ||
| Jolly |
Dig into your charging system, run all the checks, sounds to me like you're not pushing voltage to the battery, you're just draining it to zero. | ||
| Hootowl |
I vote grounds. Check them all. | ||
| Buellrobot |
Ditto on what hootowl said. I went through and cleaned all the contacts leading up to the starter and the ground strap. Bike ran like a new machine after this! | ||
| Ratbuell |
The gauge will tell you "I'm failING"...BEFORE you're dead on the side of the road. It can also tell you charge/discharge rates correlated to RPM. What is your V when idling? At 2000 RPM? 3000? When you installed the new wiring harness, did you make sure all the ground points were clean, bare metal and use star washers under each bolt head, to keep them locked in? | ||
| Richx186 |
The battery doesn't slowly drain... Just straight killed in two seconds when the bike dies on a ride, when Pocono Mt Harley took it out for a ride it died while he had it hooked up to a voltmeter, when completely dead instantly. The bike will sit and idle all day long. Put it in gear and ride and that's when it will do whatever it does, if that helps. Not in neutral only in gear while riding | ||
| Two_seasons |
Voltage Regulator shorting to ground? | ||
| Ratbuell |
Batteries cannot go from full to empty instantly. At least not without exploding. The bike dies "instantly" because the V finally gets too low for the systems to operate. | ||
| Richx186 |
No BS kills all cranking amps immediately, when the bike dies the battery dies, I've been all around and inside this bike, checked all grounds, power wires, everything, voltage regulator and wires are mint, this is year two with this problem, like I've said, it will idle all day long, u can hold it at 5000rpm all day long in neutral. Put her in gear and that's wen it will quit and kill battery, again it doesn't drain it slowly, it kills all cranking amps immediately and no the battery doesn't blow up | ||
| Brother_in_buells |
Put her in gear and that's wen it will quit and kill battery, again it doesn't drain it slowly, Is there anything done with the kickstand switch? Maybe silly ,but have a try with ignition on but engine not running and then put it in gear(while doing that measure battery) Also you could disconnect everything thats not needed for having engine running and see from there when putting in gear!? | ||
| Richx186 |
kick stand sensor or switch.. Was removed by my friend wen he owned it, never had a problem with it wen he owned it. | ||
| Mmmi_grad |
The drag specialties high performance is supposed to be the same Yuasa made in USA ati vibe etc etc. I only buy those and they last a few years with even abusive winter recharging. | ||
| Harleyelf |
If the lean stand sensor was shorted together and not well insulated, you might have a dead short to ground just when you engage the clutch and enter first gear. Find the wire and examine it. | ||
| X1tuber |
FYI, at idle you should have more than 12.5 volts. I suspect that your new stator or regulator are bad, especially if you got them from Rick's. You need to check battery output while running, and throughout the rpm range. Also, your stator puts out AC voltage, the regulator is DC, make sure your meter is set right. I have seen many charging systems that are fine at an idle, but fall flat on their face at higher rpms. As others have said, the bike dies because you are powering the ecm, injectors, coil and lights on battery power alone. When the available power is gone, it shuts off suddenly. The intermittent issue is another factor, which most definitely points to either a contact or ground strap. Start at square one though,... regulator output. To test if it's a bad ground, make a new ground strap and connect it from the battery negative ground to the chassis. If that fixes the issue...problem solved. | ||
| Harleyelf |
Square two would be stator output - remember to set the meter to AC. The voltage goes up with RPM and has to be double what you want for your DC output, so 28 to sixty volts AC is good as you run RPMs up from idle. The probes go where the voltage regulator plugs in, that two-prong connector. | ||
| X1tuber |
Ditto, and check it before the harness too. Assume all suspects are guilty offenders. | ||
| 2kx1 |
Foam under battery? | ||
| Buellrobot |
@2kx1 It's a rubber pad sitting under the batter, on top of the battery mounting area. The pad is made out of same stuff as an inner tube. Mine was really cruddy and so I replaced it with a rubber shelf liner mat I got from a hardware store and cut to size. |
