Took the bike out today and the first thing was to unplug the charger as I always keep it plugged in ...went out for a ride and made a few stops on the way but on the last stop I had to bump it cos the battery was flat ! I have maybe started the bike five or six times and it has drained , I have put it back on charge and it is super low , this battery is only 10 months old but it sounds like a cell has packed up to me , but to be sure could someone tell me the easiest way to check the alternator output ?

Multimeter across the termimals. Should be putting out sbout 14.4v when running at 5000 rpm if I remember correctly. 13v when not running.

I'd say you reg rect is fucked, which it turn is why your battery is also fucked.

Cheers guys , will check it out tomorrow

Just looked on eBay at rectifiers and there are bloody hundreds of them at varying prices ... can anybody recommend anything specific or doesn't it matter ?

Right , need some serious help here ! Checked the voltage on the battery and it was 12.98v , checked green to red on rectifier plug it read 12.98 ign off and 12.76 ign on , seems ok I thought . I then checked yellow to yellow on rectifier plug and got 0.7 , 0.4 and 0.6 ohms so thereabouts , marvellous ! I then checked the rectifier itself and all but 1 to 5 were close but this was 0.56ohms as opposed to 0.7 - 10 according to Haynes . Lastly I started the bike and got it warm nothing on at all and done a battery check across the terminals and it was dropping like a stone , after about a minute it was down to 10.8 v ... This is doin my head in as even when I throttled up to 3000 revs it still dropped ! Tried a few mins later and at idle it was holding fast at 11.9 v , at 3000rpm it dropped to 11.6 any ideas ?