Bike dead

[coffeeboy4]

Hi everyone, I have a 96 voyager and was away for 5 weeks but had a battery tender on the bike. I tried to start it Tuesday and it cranked about 4 times then all power went off. I have a voltmeter on it, about 13.4 volts. When I turn key on voltmeter go black, no lights no radio, nothing. Sometimes I hear a slight hum somewhere in faring but can’t locate it.
Thanks for any help.
Bob

[etheis]

Hi everyone, I have a 96 voyager and was away for 5 weeks but had a battery tender on the bike. I tried to start it Tuesday and it cranked about 4 times then all power went off. I have a voltmeter on it, about 13.4 volts. When I turn key on voltmeter go black, no lights no radio, nothing. Sometimes I hear a slight hum somewhere in faring but can’t locate it.
Thanks for any help.
Bob

That's a tough one.

You might have an electrical issue. While debugging this, if at any time you start smelling hot electics (kind of like a running electric heater), or see smoke anywhere,
turn the key off immediately. If either of these things happen, you need someone knowledable in troubleshooting electric circuits to troubleshoot it.

I would first suspect the battery.
Check that the battery connections are clean and tight.

You said the motor cranked a few times - did it crank at normal speed or slowly?
If it cranked at normal speed and stopped abruptly, it's probably not the battery.
If it cranked weakly, then stopped, the battery is either discharged or damaged.
The battery tender may not have been doing its job (or may have cooked your battery).

A voltmeter won't tell you much about the state of the battery, except whether it's dead or not.
It won't tell you anything about how charged the battery is.

You say you have a voltmeter? Hopefully you mean a handheld multimeter?

If you have a multimeter, measure across the battery termnals, key off. A battery will normally read ~12.5 volts.
If it's less that 12 volts, the battery's discharged, or more likely faulty.

While measuring the voltage, turn the key on. If the battery voltage dropss more than half a volt, the battery's discharged or faulty.

While measuring the voltage, turn the key on and hit the starter. Again, if the battery voltage drops more than one volt, the battery's discharged or faulty.
If the voltage drops to nearly zero, you have a bad battery.
If the voltage drops a volt or two and stays there, you may have an electrical problem (short). Stop, as this could melt your wiring, start a fire, etc.
In this case you need somebody that can troubleshoot electical issues.

Motorcycle batteries are not like car batteries: They don't last nearly as long. When I ran lead acid batteries 5+ years ago and earlier), I would get 2-5 years out of one,
pretty much no matter what. (2 years if you ever let the water get low enough to expose the plates). (I used to ride all the time).
I can't speak for the new glass mat batteries - not enough experience.

I've also had batteries do odd things when they were starting to fail. Most will just gradually degrade, being able to crank the starter shorter and shorter periods.
I've had a few fail like this, to where I didn't even know they were failing. My bikes usually start withing 3-4 cranks, so the battery got pretty bad before I noticed.
One hard starrt, and the battery quickly faded out.

I had another fail in much the way you described: It would take a charge, have good voltage, crank the motor a turn or two, then die like it was stone dead, no lights.
As soon as you remove the load (cranking), it would come right back and look fine. Hit the starter: one crank, then dark again. That one was only 8 months old.
No amount of recharging would help it. Replaced it, and the issue disappeared forever.

So in the last test - Measuring the voltage while you hit the starter - if the voltage drops a lot (more than 1 volt) when you hit the starter, your battery is bad.
A good battery's voltage will drop a little when you apply a heavy load (like the starter), and very gradually lose voltage while the load continues.

It's also possible you have a short somewhere.


I had a 'good' one once.
One day I was out for a ride on my then current Kaw 1100 buzzing down the freeway in Los Angeles, about 50 miles from home.
Without warning, the bike cut out a couple times, then went dark. No lights, no nothing. Naturally I had no tools with me.
I dug around under the seat, and found the main fuse (30A) was blown. I'd never heard of one of those blowing, and 30A is a lot. Pretty much only a dead short could pull that much current.

I had a (single) spare fuse. But now the conundrum: If I put it in, and it blows again, I've got nothing. Such I did much poking at all accessible wiring harnesses, looking for any obvious break, rubbing, etc. Nothing.

So in goes the spare fuse. The bike started right up. But I thought maybe I should head home. So I did.

About 5 miles later, it happened again.
First time I've ever had a bike towed. Thank God for AAA RV/Motorcycle addon.

Got it home, pulled the tank, seat, side covers, installed a new fuse. Fired it up: works perfectly.
3 hours of examining, poking, prodding every inch of every wiring harness everywhere, shaking, yanking: nothing. I managed to get the lights to flicker a couple times - telling me some issue was still there. I could NOT get it to fail again.
I was down to having to just ride it until it fails again, and try debugging again on the side of some random highway. As I often did 50-150 miles in a day, in LA freeways/traffic, an unexpected failure was not a welcome idea.
I had given up, turned the key on and was just staring at it when a noticed tiny wisp of smoke. Instead of turning the key off immediately, I left it on, frantically looking for the source before the fuse blew.

I found it.
The main wiring harness that runs under the tank and frame backbone was against the coil mounting brackets -perfectly normal.
But one of the brackets had a sharpish edge. Over the years of vibration and whatever, that edge had made an invisible cut into the wiring harness, and into (naturally) the main hot lead. The cut was so fine you could not see it unless you freed the wiring harness and flexed it.


I've been riding 47 years and counting, and mostly do all my own work. I'm also a softwave engineer (firmware, actually), and have a good understanding of electrics.
Over the years, I've had 14 bikes, two were Kaw 1000s (one a shaft), and four Voyager XIIs, and a 1300 Voyager.

Good luck.

- Eric

[Mr Jensee]

Dont forget to make sure your battery connections are tight. If loose the battery wont charge.

[chevyman1]

sounds like a bad Battery

[ekap1200]

Good find Eric, I had forgotten about that one. I was looking over my maintenance records last night and at 28k had the front apart for inspection , front progressive springs tires and head bearing adjustment and getting dimensions to make a spanner socket and noticed a few areas where some plastic split wire loom was needed to hampers future damage to the harness wiring from sharp area's. Wow that was some time ago. Do address the wiring from the key switch to hamper it from damage and pulling at the solder joints and sharp bending, It is a known issue on these 1200's. also be sure no one has tied or miss-routed the coolant expansion tank hose. And under the trunk , there is only one small 3/4 wide opening to feed that harness coming from the right side to under the trunk rear sub-frame and the plastic wheel well fender. And speaking of the trunk. give the trunk lamp switch a small drop of something to avoid that from coming loose and killing the bat in an evening.
Gene Kap.

[Nails]

If it cranked at normal speed and stopped abruptly, it's probably not the battery.

Unless the battery has an internal short.

I had another fail in much the way you described: It would take a charge, have good voltage, crank the motor a turn or two, then die like it was stone dead, no lights.
As soon as you remove the load (cranking), it would come right back and look fine. Hit the starter: one crank, then dark again. That one was only 8 months old.
No amount of recharging would help it. Replaced it, and the issue disappeared forever.

That's the classic symptom.

I understand that this is a mechanical failure so that plates come together and short, but only when a load is applied.

[coffeeboy4]

Thanks everyone, it was the battery. It was still under warranty, took it back and they gave me a new one Everything good now.

[ekap1200]

Did you charge it per the instruction time/amp chart supplied before installing it ?