So here's the situation, the other day I was out of town for a long ride, bike ran great as usual. So after sitting for 1/2 hour and I went to start the bike, turn the ignition switch on and got neutral light ok, push the starter button and all I got was a bit of a buzz from under the bat wing and the neutral lite went out and then no power at all. I shut the ignition off then on and still nothing. I waited a couple minutes and tried ignition again and neutral lite came on and same thing. After 5 minutes of horsing around with this it finally kept power and turned over and started. I shut it down a couple times and restated without a problem. Today went to garage and did the same thing. I did notice the first time it did it once it was running the radio lost its time and settings which to me says the entire bike had no power which made me think battery connection or main 30 amp breaker.
Today when it did it I pulled cover off oil tank and checked the connections at main 30 amp breaker and battery connections, I shorted a screw driver across the 30 amp breaker and no differnce but did notice the breaker was loose in the metal holder and it pulled out. By now the bike decided it wanted to turn over so I changed the breaker and the relay which was mounted next to it as I noticed if I unplugged the relay the bike would act the same way.
Any thoughts on this guys?

 

prob did this but id make sure grounds are clean and tight.

 

Ya check the ground. Mine did that due to a corroded grounding wire from the battery to the frame. I replaced the wire and cleaned up the area where it mounted to the frame and it has been fine since.

 

My bike did the same exact thing when the positive cable was loose at the battery...

 

Cables are both new off the battery in fact I did extensive work on the wiring but I will pull the grOund off the frame and clean the mating surface. I'm not positive but when i pulled the 30 amp circuit breaker out of the metal box I don't think the contact was touching because if memory serves me right I pushed the contact and I got neutral light again and when I pulled it away I lost power but then it reconnected with it's spring action when I let it go and bike was fine. I just could never under stand how a circuit breaker could go bad.

 

Breakers can weaken over time and trip at less than the rated amps.

Bob
97 Heritage

 

I went out today and put on 300 miles, with no issues of power at startup, so it was either the circuit breaker or the relay, not real sure but she sure purrrred along.

 

So I get myself 300 miles frOm home today and again no power. After 15 minutes of no power I got to thinking ok time to dig into the wiring, first thing I did was try shorting the positive starter lug to the ground and no spark, ok were onto something , I pull the bag and cover off oil tank ,try a wrench frOm pos to neg and no sparky hmmm that's not right. Grab the neg cable and it was tight grab the pos cable and neutral lite cones on, damn Harley batteries with the L bracket and mount to the hole. Hopefully end of
Saga.

 

Just a word to those using wrenches as battery testers; DON'T! Met a guy back in the '70s who blew a battery up when he sorta "glitched" testing the battery. Pieces of the battery along with the acid took his eyes.

 

EXACTLY what happened to mine about a month ago, although I was only an hour from home. All I had on me at the time was my Swiss Army Tinker pocket knife, but fortunately that has a phillips screwdriver on it and I was able to tighten the positive terminal enough to get home. After getting home, I put my tool kit back into the bike! LOL!