Alright,... it seems to be the battery. You guys know your stuff.

I charged it for a few hours and plugged it into the bike and the lights lit up. I also did some research on how to use these meters and hooked it up to the batter terminals (with no battery of course) and turned the key on and the continuity checked out on it, so there are no shorts in it (I guess)

I'm not sure if it needs charged or if its just bad. I've never seen a battery go like that. It was working, then it wasn't. No slow dieing and dimming. thats why I thought something else was wrong. Funny how stuff like that works out.

 

Don't be surprised If you continue to have problems. As the battery sat dead for a few months it is probably a goner. I'd gladly be wrong, just giving you a heads up.

 

You should leave the battery on the charger for a day then try running the bike. If the battery is still good it will hold the charge and should turn over the engine. If the battery is shot it may last a little while or it won't hold any of the charge and you'll be where you are now. Battery replacement is your next step.
Next you can see if you've got other issues such as a gummed up carb or with luck it will fire up and off you go.
Sometimes there's no rhyme or reason why a battery will fail. Good luck!

 

I hate to have problems, like anyone, and will do anything to avoid them...but it does teach you about things. I knew nothing about the electrical system on this bike and had no reason to learn it...now I know.


I can handle a gummed carb. I'm just not use to bikes with full electrical systems. And what machines I did have with batteries, I never owned long enough for them to give me a problem. This bike isn't all that old either, but eventually, stuff starts to go I guess, especially the battery.

I was thinking of just picking one up tomorrow if I get around to it.


Thanks again everyone... it really helped.

 

It sounds as if your battery is not charged very well. Why not grab the bat from your dad's bike and try it in yours. IT is the easiest and cheapest thing to do. It may be a bad ground or bad connection to your keyswitch.
If you have nothing happening when you turn your key on it may be the keyswitch itself. Keep it simple.

 

Its new battery time Jason.

If it was just dead because it had sat around for a long time you might have been able to breath new life into it with a couple of charge/discharge cycles. But the problems you had when the bike just went dead during a ride indicate to me that the battery is stuffed,
Probably something inside has broken so even if you get it going again now its a time bomb before it happens again.

I'd check the charge voltage from the bike as a precaution.
You should get around 14.5 volts, with the battery connected @ 4000 rpm.

 

I bought mine new from the dealer, which I guess had had it for a while. They charged the battery before I left and it started and put it on the trailer for the ride home. Needless to say, when I got home it wouldn't start. Put my charger on trickle for the night and still nothing. Needless to say it was a bad cell in the battery. How about that, a brand new bike with a bad battery. Needless to say, they replaced it free of charge and have had no problems since. The batteries in these things probably aren't the best you can buy because of price. It sounds like yours is bad as well, from what I've read here.

 

Just picked a new one up....seems as if NAPA was the cheapest I could find one. Its hard because it has to fit into that little bay we have. If it was a 4 wheeler that it fit inside somewhere, it wouldn't be a big deal. I could have picked one up from K mart for like 40-50 bucks.

I got it for $98 at NAPA. He said there that the OEM replacement was $159 ... something close to that.

After sitting dead for 4 months in an unheated garage..all I had to do was pull the choke and touch the starter button and it immediately fired right up.

 

Nice!

 

Yeah, I can't wait to ride now tomorrow. If I had fixed it immediately after it happened I could have ridden 2 more weeks later in the season last year, could have scraped one road ride out in late December, and could have been road riding 2 weeks ago instead of a solid 4 month down time. But, oh well,just all that much more excited to ride.

Take winter, I hate winter, but it makes spring all the more nicer when it gets here. We normally don't have this solid of a winter. Usually it snows then melts, snows then melts, etc. etc. This year it only melted...like,..one time in December, all the rest of the time we were solid snow and it didn't melt until early March.

Snow seems to be all gone now..maybe a bit more on the higher elevations...now its just a dry out game.... Provided we dont get any more snow of course.