HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL LLLLLLLLLLLLLLPPPPPP.

I went for a little ride today and i shut her off for a half a second. next thing i know i tried to turn the key and fire her up.....................NOTHING. I have no electrical anything. No lights no nothing. there was a small "pop" of sorts that i heard before i noticed that i have zero electrical anything. We are talking no horn, headlight, runnning lights, neutral light, start switch.....nothing. I am at a loss and dont even know where to begin. Any and all help is helpful. Im looking to see what ,how, where to start.

 

Volt meter across the battery, if you have volts check the main, on newer models there is a relay and big fuse. There are very few things that block power to all circuits.

 

Well today i started in on trying to track down what may be the cause of the failure. Pulled the battery and ran a volt check......4.5v. Soooooo there is problem number one. Battery lid was a little swollen, no longer fitting correctly around the edges. I guess where i should now be looking is the charging system. Seeing how i dont believe that the battery was shorted out and it is only a few weeks old, im under the impression that it may be over charged. If there is any good write ups on a "how to" for checking the rotor,stator,and regulator please include a link. I have a service manual and have looked through it for any info and its a bit vague on step by step.

 

Keep it simple, charge the battery and reinstall and fire her up, keep the revs over 2000RPM and use a multimeter to check the voltage, should be 14-15 volts, do that first & report the result to go from there.

 

I solved my frustration of not knowing what the charging system was doing by hacking together a temp/portable volt meter. I used a $30 plastic digital thing that has a volt meter , clock , and maybe 6 things. I already had an SAE connector for charging already on the bike, I bought another (autozone or TSC) and wired it to the leads on the digital thing. The trick here is that you are wiring this SAE reversed to the polarity of the color code on the SAE stub wires. I then used Velcro cable wraps to hook it on the handlebars. Now I can ride around and watch the voltage levels. Leave it in the toolbox when I'm done.