A lesson to share.....

I was pulling onto my driveway off of a dirt road (our road is not paved) when all of a sudden the bike just dies, hmmmm what the he#k. I roll it into the garage and tried to start it, this is where it get really fun. The tach goes crazy and I hear the relay in the headlight assembly buzzing along with the relay in the side panel clicking. What the he#k!! I try again same thing, but this time I hit the horn button, it sounds a tiny bit and then just dies. I check the battery with my multimeter and it shows 12.9 volts,,, hmm should be ok IÔÇÖm thinking. I try moving varies wires around and that would make the horn work for just a brief instant and then dies . Do all the relay, fuse and wire checks and replacements (I have spare relays) and it does the samethng. I decide to leave the multi meter (surface charge showing 12.9) on and turn the ignition key on the voltage drops to 3 volts!!! What the he#K the battery is less than a year old and cost quite a few $$$ (Interstate battery) it canÔÇÖt be the battery. I take the battery down to AutoZone to have them do a load test on it and no surprise the battery was bad. The moral to the story if its an electrical issue check the battery first and do more than just checking the surface charge, because that tells you nothing!! You have to put in under a load. I know most probably know this already but I thought IÔÇÖd share my experience hopefully saving someone time and aggravation.

Thanks

Wonder how many of us have spun our wheels trying to diagnois a electrical problem because we overlooked teating the battery properly.Thanks for the post.

There are a couple of folks over on ADV in the Old's Cool forum whose standard answer to most ills = "It's always the battery."

But good point - they do go bad sometimes in short order (I've had top of the line car batteries develop an internal short within one month). And the only way to chase electrical gremlins are to rule out things one at the time sometimes starting all the way back to the battery as the ultimate source. And that has to be load tested to rule it out.