I fitted Oxford heat hand grips to my bike and they have an intelligent gizmo which detects if the battery is low and switches off the grips. It is supposed to stop you flattening the battery if you forget to turn the grips off when you leave the bike. Well they switched off while riding so I thought I'd get the multimeter out and measure the battery.

With the motor idling I was getting 13.5V and when I reved it would drop to 13.2V. This was with nothing on except the headlight which I don't get a choice about. I did disconnect the headlight and it went up to 13.8V. The minimum standard in the manual is 14.1V. Cleaning all the terminals didn't make a difference.

So what I did was splice an extra earth and power cable between the battery and regulator. The white wire out of the regulator is the output so that goes to the positive terminal of the battery and the black with yellow trace is the earth and that goes to the negative terminal on the battery. On the positive lead I used a fuse to protect the wiring. The wire I used has a 2.9mm cross sectional area. I now get 14.3V at the battery with the headlight running and engine at idle. With the grips on full power the voltage drops to 13.6V but when it is reved is goes to 14.2V.

Now the heated grips don't shut themselves off when riding, cheap fix considering I was thinking I needed to upgrade my stator.

 

Is this circumventing dirty/corroded connections or indicating a flaw in the wiring harness?

 

I cleaned all the connectors I could find and it didn't make any difference. Cleaned earth points and battery terminals, no difference. My multi meter isn't very good for low resistive measurements but the cables to and fro seem to be fine.

My best guess is that the wire guage used isn't quite up to the job. Water may also have leeched in between the insulation and copper. I would have liked to known if it has been only outputting 13.5V right off the factory floor, but I have only owned this bike for a couple of months. Having that lower output wouldn't probably have been noticed by the previous owner,as it is enough to keep the battery in a state so it can start the bike. I only noticed after adding the heated grips and having them shut off when riding.

Would be interesting if a few other KLX riders took voltage readings, mine might be a one off, Friday afternoon build.

 

Easiest way to isolate a bad section of wiring would be to use the voltmeter to check for voltage drop on each section/harness connector. Just set the meter to dc voltage and use the probes to isolate a section. If there is any resistance/corrosion you will see a voltage reading on the meter. The voltage indicates a resistance in line-more resistance equals more voltage on the meter.

 

I discovered the same issue after installing a voltage monitor last year. A new voltage regulated/rectifier did not help. The wiring diagram shows an indirect path from the
VRR to the battery, on the ground side. I did as Bluezr7 did, problem solved.

 

I have run AME heated grips on my 650 Versys and ZRX1200. The AME grips also turn themselves off automatically and so far no issues with either bike.

 

I wonder if this is why I keep killing batteries using my electrical winter gear. It uses most of the extra power the bike (supposedly) makes but not all of it. I thought it was good, but if not all the power is there in the first place...
I'm going to have to check into this.

 

Definitely worth wacking a multimeter across the battery. I thought I was up for a new regulator when I first came across the low voltage. 2 lengths of wire are much cheaper than a getting a regulator which is why I tried it. Looking at doing a similar thing with the headlight wiring to see if I can squeeze a little more brightness out of it. Actually I should check the brightness now that I'm getting nearly a volt more than I was.

 

This is a nice, compact, inexpensive voltage monitor. -
Eclipse Battery Voltage Monitor | SparkBright

 

These guys are getting pretty good reviews for their LED headlight bulbs - 2 choices


- 3600 Lumen LED Headlight bulb for Dirtbikes/Dual Sports

- http://www.cyclopsadventuresports.co...ulb-_p_83.html

There is a long thread on ADV rider about them as well.