Weak charging system?

I was out riding and my F650 CS battery quit - dead as a doornail. Even the LEDs failed.

Was able to get a jump and get home from a friendly Goldwing.

I was running the heat grips and extra PIA lights. Is the F650 CS able to keep up with this demand?

Bike has about 1000 miles on the clock.

Thanks

(will also check the chaingang site)

Paul

It should...

I've seen many who have heated suits cranked, hand warmers on and no problems...
Old battery maybe?
Have you checked the Voltage at the battery lately?
Bad connections?

By the way...Ballston Spa. I'm over near Wilton.

-Kutch

Hey Paul,
Your bike has a 400 watt alternator. You should be able to run the grips and extra lights out on the road. Around town you will not be able to run the lights as you found out. Just remember that at idle your not making 400 watts.

Did you get your luggage yet, did I miss the pictures?

Luggage came

The luggage came but not mounted yet. Am still trying to get the post a picture process to work on this forum. Have not make it work yet so may have to use a Yahoo link instead.

I was highway running at the time the bike decided to expire.

Ride is now with dealer for 600 mile checkup with explanation of problem.

Making progress slowly.

PAULBACH said:

Ride is now with dealer for 600 mile checkup with explanation of problem.

Click to expand...

Paul, help us out here. 600-mile svc indicates a fairly new bike. (But not necessarily.)
Is this the first time out this year? Did you even have it last year?
Now we know the mileage, but what year is it?
We all know what happens when we ass-ume.

I have a three year old CS. I have a voltage monitoring system installed. When I'm running heated vest, gloves and grips everything is fine above 4000 rpm. When I slow down, I notice the charging system can't keep up and the battery is being drained. 400 watts is not a lot of juice with an older battery.

Bike Facts

Bike is a 2005 with about 500 miles on it.

Was not first time outl. Stored with Battery Tender on it all winter.

Was steady highway riding for about an hour wen event occurred.

I think heated grips on high and PIA lights were a bit much. I do like the LED suggestion.

Paul

Weak Charging System

Your CS does NOT have enough charging capacity to support those lights.
A friend of mine had the same problem with a 2003 CS.
Installed Moto-Lights and the bike would die if running in medium to slow traffic. Or would be hard to start at a filling station if she did not turn off the lights quickly.
Her answer was to install 20 watt bulbs instead of the 35 watt bulbs that are standard on the Moto-lights. Now she can run the lights, grips and vest.

I suggest that you get a voltage indicator light..

Then you can see what is happening....

The first thing you should do is hook up a digital voltmeter at the battery & check to see what the rectifier is putting out from idle to 4,000 rpms. You should be seeing 14v+ at 4k. Charging issues aren't uncommon in the F series bikes. Read up on the problems at the Chain Gang site.

And the answer was ...

Got my F650 CS back today and the problem was ...

One dead cell in the battery. Max replaced the battery for free.

Paul

I just read an interesting article in the last CW about batteries. It said that if you never charge it to 100% on a charger it will never reach anything over 80% from your alternator/charging system. So if alls you ever did with a new battery was add chemicals and ride it, that it will never be 'right' and will wear out faster than a properly charged battery when new.

Paul you have little time left, so throw that baby on a charger for a couple days and let it get its full potential of use.


Doc

Memory Effect in Lead Acid?

Good advice and thank you.

This was always a problem with many of the batteries in amateur radio equipment. (W2USN here). You had to first charge a new battery 100% or something nasty called the memory effect would plague the cells.

The CS has a lead acid battery. The dreaded memory effect was true of NICAD cells. Does the same apply to lead acid?

Back in my active amateur radio days the battery topic would cause as much heat and flames as:

-the best tires
-the best oil
-shifting without the clutch

in the motorcycle forums.

THANKS AGAIN!

PAULBACH said:

The CS has a lead acid battery. The dreaded memory effect was true of NICAD cells. Does the same apply to lead acid?
THANKS AGAIN!

Click to expand...

Yes, if you buy a motorcycle battery mailorder or at a store the box will contain a chart with the recommended charge times to bring the battery up to full charge depending on battery amperage.

here are my notes from another thread from quite a few months ago for the same problem that I had with my bike. If you want to see the full thread do a search for F650csa and it is in the tech area.


Thanks for the help guys

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The dealer worked on it for a while with various accessories running as well as at various RPMs. They were saying that below 4000 RPM the battery is discharging with grips and heated coat on. Above that they said it would be ok but to not run things all the time like some of you have suggested.

Here is what I have running so far. I also have a LED brake/tail light instead of the stock one so that should pull less from the overall requirements. I do want to find out exactly what the wattage is on the bike.

30w for CDI
65w for headlight on high beam
10w for instrument panel
5w or less for the taillight
180w for ABS [would this only activate when the ABS was required to pulsate?]
??? Heated grips [need to find out how much they draw]

Added items
70w for motolights [havenÔÇÖt used since the battery died]
22w for heated socks [with Gerbing controller]
77w for heated jacket liner [with Gerbing controller]

I rode the bike in this morning and did what others along with the dealer have suggested about turning things off when coming to slow traffic or intersections and that seems to have worked.

I will write more later on this but I did order a LED to show if the system was charging or discharging. Hope to have that in sometime next week.

rpivonka said:

Your CS does NOT have enough charging capacity to support those lights.
A friend of mine had the same problem with a 2003 CS.
Installed Moto-Lights and the bike would die if running in medium to slow traffic. Or would be hard to start at a filling station if she did not turn off the lights quickly.
Her answer was to install 20 watt bulbs instead of the 35 watt bulbs that are standard on the Moto-lights. Now she can run the lights, grips and vest.

Click to expand...

Where and what kind of 20 watt bulbs were used? I would like to lower my wattage as well.