My Father and I were gonna go for a ride today. Mine started right up. His just cranks, but doesn't start. His bike has power to everything. The fuel injection makes the normal noise when the ignition switch is turned on.
We checked relays, and they seem to be working fine.
His bike was cranking more than normal on start up in the last few times we rode, but it started. Today nothing. What else should we check?

 

look in the tank see if the fuel pump is running constantly...pinholed fuel hose

you can check the spark by removing ( or using an old plug) attach the wire to teh plug and ground the metal shell of the plug to the motor.

crank and look for spark


mike

 

+1 on checking for spark

 

Disconnect and reconnect the fuel line quick disconnect on the bottom of the gas tank. Sometimes flow gets cut off for no reason and removing and reconnecting restores flow. Whether it works or not, the price is right.

 

The bike has new in tank fuel lines and filter, since that was mentioned.
Just went out and hit the start button and it fired right up. This is aggravating. I don't want to have this happen again somewhere out of state on a ride and be stranded...
The bike has a two year old battery. We cranked on the bike till it got weak (earlier in the day when we were gonna go for a ride), then hooked up a battery tender till it was completely charged. After taking it off the tender it fired up.

 

tender/charger not the same thing.

a charger will charge a battery...a tender will tend a charged battery.

for better battery life use a charger when the battery is run down, use a tender when it is already charged up and being stored

mike

 

A tender will charge a battery. I have done it many times. I've thrown a tender on my truck with a dead battery and it was completely charged in two days. I've put one on a dead lawn mower and had it charged in a day. The bike in question was recharged with a tender.
I rather charge small batteries at a slow, lower amperage charge than use my roll around battery charging cart.
Now that that's over, I still wonder what caused the problem and wonder if it will happen again in the future.

 

I call it a "tender" but mine is a 1.5 amp charger that switches into the tender mode when battery is fully charged, charger/tender. Some may have a pure tender but how does that top off the battery when internal loss drops the voltage a little?

Now to the problem at hand. Next guess would be a bad connection at: the coil, the ECM, the crank position sensor. If it were my machine I would disconnect each of those plugs, spray with electrical cleaner, add some dielectric grease if you like and reconnect. The crank position sensor may have a second plug in the cavity under the front engine mount and is an ideal location to get soaked with oil each time the oil filter is changed. You might want to clean that plug also. If this doesn't do it, there are plenty more connectors and switches, but this won't cost much.

 

If it won't run it's either spark or fuel. Pull the plugs as Mike said above and ground to the cylinder head, crank bike and look for spark. If you have spark, try squirting some starting fluid (ether) into the throttle body. Since you've already restarted it, I'm leaning towards spark, not fuel.

 

I had a somewhat similar issue, make sure the starter hasn't come loose from the frame. Even if that's not the problem this time, can't hurt to check...ask me how I know.