This weekend just gone, I went back home for the first time in about six weeks. As it had been a while, I made sure the bike would start on Friday night just in case the battery had decided to die while not being used, or had not been charged properly on my last trip. The bike chugged over on the starter for a little while longer than usual, however it was not laboured and is not uncommon if it's been left a while. I assume that this is fuel evaporation over time, and that everything between the tank and engine is sorting itself out.
Next morning, the bike started fine. Nothing untoward on my journey to play trains, with the exception that on one occasion I noticed the indicator repeated was flashing rapidly . I figured a visit to Halfrauds or similar was on the card on the way home because one had blown. Oddly, it only did it once, and behaved the rest of the time.
When I went to leave, I hit the starter button and literally nothing happened. No click from the solenoid, no buzz, no feeble whine from the starter. I said something like oh dear, and took my lid off to make sure it wasn't a case that I couldn't hear anything because I had it on and plugs in. It wasn't. Like you do, I tried again, and the solenoid fired, but the starter turned over with all the might of an asthmatic ant. Oh dear, I said again. Remembering a weird situation 18 months or more ago when something like this happened in really hot weather when I'd done a lot of sitting about in traffic, I waited another couple of minutes, and hit the starter again. It turned over with just enough gusto that a few pumps of the throttle had it catch, and I was able to start the journey home. Unfortunately, I was not going to get home without issue. Despite everything being normal on the way back, a few miles from home, I went to pull away at a roundabout, and the bike stalled. This is exactly what happened in the situation above, and the same issue occurred immediately afterwards - not enough power to energise the solenoid. All I got was a buzz, and after I waited a few mins to try again, it was clear the battery was flat as the starter had no guts even when the solenoid would play ball.
Fortunately, I had come to grief near a nice downhill side street, and I managed to paddle fast enough to bump the bike into life, and I got home. I left it running and grabbed my meter. At best, I measured 13V flat, but it was bouncing around 12.8 for the most part. I turned the bike off and measured the battery, the result was a whopping 12.2V. Despite that, when I tried to start it again, it fired up first time, the starter turning over very healthily like nothing was wrong.
A few months ago, I fitted Nightbreakers to the bike after doing the low beam relay mod. I have noticed a few times that the battery seems to sit at about 12.6V after use rather than a little higher as I would expect before the so called float charge wears off. I am wondering if I still need to make improvements to the charging system output as the extra 40W of load now I can run 60/55 as opposed to 60/35 means I'm running very close to discharge? Or maybe the battery is just knackered? I did test it not that long ago and it retained a good charge off the bike for a whole week, barely dropping a few hundredths of a volt after settling down from being charged. If a battery is low and being charged by the system, can it cause the voltage measured at the terminals to be decreased while the bike is running?
This weekend, I will yet again be investigating all the standard things, plus the indicators just to see if maybe one of them has shipped in something and is shorting to ground which might explain the odd flashing behaviour that one time. To recap, after previous events, the bike has a new reg/rec, plus new crimped and soldered connections for both the reg/rec and alternator, and in addition, the reg/rec output goes directly to the battery through a fused spur. Stator measured in spec for ohms and VAC across all pairs, and system output around 13.8VDC with a fully charged battery.
At this rate, I'm tempted to say sod it, and buy a new stator, RO trick switching reg/rec and something like a MotoBatt to eliminate all possibilites. This is getting really boring now!
