My wife’s 2000 Deuce trike conversion (60k miles) died on the road Saturday after giving her trouble with back firing and stalling with a new battery tested by the Indy that sold it. Luckily we were close to home and I went home to get tools and jumper cables after thinking it was the new battery that died. The battery was week at the time and when I tried to jump it off my truck (yes all the connections were clean) it still would not turn over and eventually even the head light totally shut off. Had it towed home, checked battery connections again, tried to charge it and the breaker on the charger trips. Pull battery and charge it, charges fine. Checked all wiring I could searching for a short, nothing loose or broken. Pull the regulator today, cleaned ground area between regulator and frame and re-installed with die-electric grease but left the connector to stator undone. I suck, nor do I understand their use but I tried a meter I inherited and got an ohm reading of 1 (from blade to ground). When I hooked the meter up to both blades and got a reading of 4.8 with meter set to 200 scale (I think). Re-install battery and it starts fine so I check the output voltage for the stator and got a reading of 24 at idle, bike dies shortly after due to no regulator being hooked up. Expected that to happen. Put the connector back together for the regulator to stator and tried to charge the battery and it pops the breaker on the charger. Disconnect connector again and battery charges fine while still installed in bike. WTF is going on??
Thanks for any help/advise you can provide.