You can't trust a dealer to tell you "everything is good" My dealer had my bike for 2 weeks and said, "there's nothing wrong". On the way home, everything stopped - no electric to anything. Thankfully, I was 1/2-block from my home. I pushed it there, removed both battery cables at the battery, the positive from the starter, and the ground from the engine case. I cleaned all 8 points of contact as described above, and haven't had a problem since. BUT, the dealer told me, "there's nothing wrong". Enough said about trusting a dealer, and a valuable lesson learned about the importance of good cable contact.

When you did your bars could you have nicked some insulation on a wire that's now shorting out? Or perhaps at a splice you have some bare wire shorting out? There's definitely a problem there with your turn signals, but I doubt it's causing your heated battery cable. Logic tells me it should blow a fuse before it affects a cable.

 

Like above, you have a pinched/stripped wire on the signals, hot side. That won't affect the battery cables though. Possible you had a cable either rub on something or come loose. the cable gets hot because the starter is drawing more current that the cable can hold, usually because it's loose, but I could be way wrong though.

 

Yeah, all the heavy cables including the ground. Hook your meter, if possible, to the actual terminal to whatever the cables are on, like put the meter lead on the battery positive and the other on the starter bolt/nut.

If it's getting hot, then something's wrong. Either way too much current is flowing through the cable or the resistance of the cable is too high, regardless of if it is new or recently blessed by a stealership. I still would not rule out a starter with a shorted armateur.

I think Thumber is a little overboard on the twice a year (unless he lives on the coast), but he is on target for eliminating that potential problem from ever coming up. Also interesting on using neverseize as a anti-oxidant. That's a good idea. The stuff usually has copper in it.I'll try that stuff next time I need some. I'm about out of Ox-Guard or whatever it was I used on the wire into the circuit breaker box on the last meter loop I put up.

 

Just for reference,I have nearly 11:1 compression on my '90 1200 with no comp. releases.The stock starter turns it over fine everytime.Has been for over a year now.High torque starter is probably not needed .I had the same problems with myblinkers and never did figure out what it was.I removed them(would have anyway)Never had hot cables though.

 

Go to walmart and get a twin size electric blanket. Set it on medium amd drape it over the engine. it will start easy in tthe cold. Dosn't do much good when your not at home though.

 

You nailed it, my house is 2-1/2 blocks from the beach on the Atlantic Ocean.

 

From the looks of it you have eliminated a loose or corroded cable, which would be the first thing to look for. The bike is almost 20 years old, had some serious modifications to increase compression, and that little old starter is giving up. A cable will get hot when the starter is internally shorted, won't turn and the juice goes to ground. The overly bright headlight also indicates that the current is looking for another way out. Suggest pulling and testing the starter.