I recently accidentally left my bikes lights on for about 3-4 hours (dumb i know) on my 04 FXLDi. The battery is less than a year old and the bike started up, it seemed like, as it usually does. I had a 75 mile ride home so i figured the battery should get some decent time recharging.

The next day on my way to work i threw the high beams on and noticed that the battery light and the engine light popped on. I turned the high beams off and the lights went away. That night i put the bike back on the trickle charger which showed it monitoring a full charge the next day.

Since then i've had the both the check engine and battery warning lights pop on intermittently during my ride into work. They mostly come on halfway and towards the end of my 30 min ride. I've also noticed that my bike will idle high when stopped at lights. Normal idle is between 900 and 1000 RPM. It was idling somewhere between 12-13,000 RPM (but not at every light)

I just bought a multimeter and tested the battery after taking some of the surface voltage off. Battery had 12.4-12.6 volts. I started the bike and saw my voltage drop to about 9 volts and climb to around 14 volts with the bike running.

I then tested the stator which showed about 0.4-0.5 ohms between all three wires. I also couldn't get any amount of a read when i tested each wire against a ground. so its seems the ground is still good. the strange part was when i got to testing the AC volts coming from the stator. All that i got coming from the stator was 0.2-0.2 AC volts.

Admittedly I'm a novice at testing electrics but did test out my outlet on the AC setting and it read right around 120V. So I'm figuring that I'm using the multimeter correctly and the stator is just not putting out much of any voltage. I haven't tested the regulator/rectifier since i think i've found my problem.

In your guys opinion is this my stator thats taken a dump? Could my compromised battery have put too much of a strain on the stator and fried it? My bike has about 10k on the odometer and to my knowledge the stator or any charging components are original to the bike. I'm confident enough with my shop manual and youtube to do the replacement on my own. however, id hate to tear into my primary and everything else if it isn't the stator and i just missed something else.

thanks in advance.

 

Test the simple stuff first. You need to have that battery load tested. Go to a local auto parts store. They will probably have to charge it first. A trickle charge is meant to maintain a battery, and a stator is not designed to recharge a battery either. My guess, your battery needs replacing. Your charging system is fine. Your diagnostic skills need tuning.

 

I agree with all of the above. I plan on getting a legit charger and getting it load tested tomorrow. Battery issues not withstanding, isn't the fact that my stator is only putting out less than a bolt an issue?

 

battery tested fine at Oreillys. I made a mistake and thought I needed to test my AC output with the negative lead on the negative battery terminal. Retested and the ground is still good, 0.4-0.5 ohms between and about 20VAC at 1k rpm. On to the regulator.