So my neighbor has a 1999 heritage softail. The battery lost a cell in it and we replaced it with a lithium ion battery. Once the new battery was in the bike, he went for a ride and the gauges and some other stuff started acting crazy on the bike such as the gauge stopped working. He got it home and upon testing the battery it was almost drained. Charge the battery up, and it does the same thing.

Start testing the voltage. at 2000rpm its only pushing out 13 volts. Decided to pull the plug at the stator with the engine not running. Turns out the stator was grounding out. Order a new one and go to install it, when I pull the primary cover it smells like an electrical short.

Now it has a new battery, voltage regulator, and stator. He rode it approx 5 mile round trip the other day. When he got home, he plugged it into his battery maintainer, and the 50% charge light was flashing. Then within an hour it shows the battery back to full charge. He has done this route a second night and it does the same thing.

#1 sorry for being so long winded, but wanted to give a back story on the bike
#2 Is it normal for the battery to do that, and if not what should I check next on it?

Thank in advance

 

Did the lithium ion battery discharge enough to kill it? Those batteries are pretty fragile from what I hear. If you have an evo have him ride with your battery that is known to be good. If it needs charging then it's the bike. If it's fine, the battery.

 

before I changed the stator and voltage regulator it took the battery all the way down. we charged it back up and the battery has been fine ever since. except for what the battery maintainer is saying. I have not been home to be able to test it. just going by what he has told me it is doing.

 

It reads like the charging system MIGHT have been having a problem.
I will guess that bike was not jump started from a running vehicle.
It reads like a battery was replaced first instead of checking the charging system based on information provided.
A lithium battery was selected instead of an AGM battery for whatever reason.
I will take a guess that old battery was tested at an autopart/batteries plus shop since you report a lost cell causing a low voltage situation.
Once the new lithium battery was installed there was NO testing of the charging system performed in order to clarify that system was operating correctly.
Upon riding and return it was discovered that new lithium battery was drained.
The lithium battery was charged...with what? they are very sensitive to voltage and the drain could have compromised the battery already.
At that point the decision was made to test electrical system and a short in the stator was discovered.
So bad stator was changed and the regulator was changed as insurance.
I will guess that electrical system at minimum was checked after that work for standing voltage, idle voltage, mid and high RPM voltage...i will guess that numbers were OK.
There is no mention of battery maintainer brand so it is impossible to know about its functions are in this application or if it is approved for lithium.
Also note that LITHIUM is different and some maintainers can NOT be used with a lithium battery and will actually destroy the battery or maintainer.
Lithium is very sensitive to voltage spikes and draining a lithium battery makes full recovery difficult to impossible sometimes.
If you used a digital voltage meter to test the electrical system then it is a possible maintainer problem or the battery got compromised by the discharge.
I hope you are lucky and that it is just a maintainer mismatch at this time.

 

We picked up a new battery maintainer for the lithium ion batteries.

 

before or now?

 

Also note that different brand maintainers have their own cycle.
For example a have a deltran that is about 15 years old that is used with AGM batteries.
Upon return from a ride it takes about 15-30 minutes to start the green blink mode and then stays with the green blink mode for a while seems like hour or hour(s) before getting to solid green.

 

When we picked up the lithium ion battery we bought the new charger to go with it.

 

Computer glitch... Wrong forum. Sorry.