Dead Battery

[wambiker]

Hi all, went out to use the bike this morning nothing, battery is dead, 3 month old hawker, have put it on charge and hope it recovers! The other day while out the generator light came on and off for about 10secs, then everything normal, and just now while having a check around the 30 amp no.3 fuse has melted the plastic body. I am now at tank off and checking wiring and earth stage. I fitted an electrex regulator when I installed the new battery as the original failed and fried the previous hawker battery! I can't check generator or regulator output till I see if the battery recovers from deep discharge-less than a volt on the multimeter. But if anyone has any ideas I would appreciate it.

Cheers Gary

[docc]

And now, after the charge, how do your voltages look?

[wambiker]

The battery seems to have recharged OK over night, it was reading 13.4 when I took it off the charger this morning. Refitted and everything fired up fine, checked output to battery across the terminals and read between, 13.4 and 13.7 up to 5000rpm. When I felt the 30amp fuse it was hot to the touch after only a short period.

I have one idea, when I checked the wiring over I remembered that the new regulator had only five wires instead of six. 2xyellow-generator,large red-battery, blue-warning light and black-earth. I have nothing wired to the original red/black wire that feeds the loom directly, I wonder if I would be better splitting the output of the one red wire to feed both the battery wire red/green and the red/black together to split the load and maybe reduce the current to the fuse? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Cheers Gary

[dlaing]

The Electrex instructions say to by-pass the factory wiring.

I too initially tried to use the factory wiring, after all the wire gauge appears to be the same, but the voltage output was too low....about 13.5V maximum, if memory serves right.

The restriction combined with a weak battery could have caused the amps to rise and fry your wiring.

I hope your regulator survived.

Judging from the symptoms, your battery is likely fine, as long as you don't overcook it with the charger.

The important thing is to bypass the factory wiring.

I ran about a foot of the electrex main wire to an inline fuse, and then switched to a heavier gauge wire.

Grounding directly to the battery will also ensure that everything is optimal.

The shop manual has some good information about checking the charging system.

The Electrex Regulator will have a lower maximum Voltage....I get about 13.9V

[wambiker]

Thanks for that I'll have a look at running aheavier gauge cable to the battery.

Cheers Gary

[Alex-Corsa]

 

Grounding directly to the battery will also ensure that everything is optimal.

 

Which cable and from where (colour ,shape, location pls.)do you have to wire direct to ground?

 

[wambiker]

Spoke to electrex today, they say the same thing ignore normal loom connection, and to cure the hot fuse rewire from regulator to battery with heavy gauge wire and new inline fuse to cure bad connection at original fuse that is causing resistance and producing heat. When I checked battery this morning it was down to 4.5 volts. Recharged and having checked the loom for shorts and finding no problems Ileft the ignition off and connected the earths to the battery and with the 10 amp setting on my multi-meter bridged the positive connections to the battery in turn with no response till I tried the connection to the regulator, and found it was drawing 0.7 amps, after pulling fuses to isolate different circuits, it is definitely the regulator, which was confirmed by unplugging the output from the unit itself. After recontacting electrex again the guy I spoke to still thinks its because of the wiring to the battery, that doesn't make sense to me, but I will rewire the the connection in the morning anyway to cure the hot fuse. I am not an electronics expert just a competent amateur vehicle electrician, so I was wondering if anyone else has any ideas. The only thing coming to mind is if the resistance in the battery connection is high will this upset the control electronics in the regulator, but why is the fault showing when the ignition is off ? Or has the high resistance buggered the regulator or is it just knackered. As usual any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

Cheers Gary

[wambiker]

I've now rewired the regulator to battery connections end of hot fuse problem, and now charges at over 14 volts thats a success. But the if I pull the main fuse out and put an ammeter across the connections I'm still getting a .75 amp discharge to the regulator and the battery drops voltage-understandable, leave the main fuse out and no problem, so I expect the regulator is up the spout, but electrex where supposed to get back to me this afternoon, but I heard nothing. Having admitted to them the main fuse was getting hot I suppose they will say its my fault the regulator has packed up. This is getting expensive in the last 18 months that will be 2 x hawker batteries and 2x regulators .

Again anyone with any ideas would be appreciated, before I bite the bullet for another regulator.

Cheers Gary