So we just did our American Legion Riders Legacy Run in Virginia this weekend. About 700 miles round trip raising money for the Legacy Scholarship Fund. I was riding my 2006 Sportster.

On Friday we had a group fuel stop, about 125 or so bikes all getting gas at the same time. I was leading a group towards the rear of the ride so had a bit of a wait. Sitting in the Love's truck stop parking lot, moving forward a few feet, stopping, shutting the bike off wait a few minutes then start it back up. Probably did that five or six times. Just as I'm about to move up to the pumps I turn on the ignition switch, lights and indicators come on like normal, hit the starter, the bike starts to crank and goes dead. Nothing, weird thing is I have a USB power port with a voltmeter in it on my handlebars that plugs into my battery tender cord, which is direct to the battery with a little fuse in it. It's not showing anything in the LED display. I'm thinking battery is totally dead. Tried my lithium jump pack and couldn't get anything. We have a chase vehicle with a trailer so we push bike up onto trailer and they haul me to the Harley dealership about 40 miles away.

Get to the dealership, roll the bike off the trailer into the shop. Turn the key and the volt meter shows 13.1 volts, bike fires right up. The Harley tech pulled my battery out, put it on their load tester, tested fine had 235 CCA. However tech pointed out battery was 4 years old. Tried it about 10 times shutting bike off and starting it back up again. Worked fine every time. Dealer was pretty cool and didn't charge me for any service time. I hopped back on the bike rode off to meet the rest of the pack and finished the ride the following day.

Battery side connections were tight, and have been removed and replaced to take the battery out for testing. Other ends are tight ( or at least don't wiggle) but haven't been removed and cleaned in a while.

Now I'm not sure how that little voltmeter in the USB port works, not sure why it didn't show any voltage. I didn't have a real voltmeter to test with. I can't think of anything wrong with the battery itself that would just magically start working. With a battery dead is pretty much dead.

I'm also pretty sure this is going to bite me in the butt again some time. I hate intermittent problems. Trying to think what else it could be besides the battery.

My son's 2001 Sportster had a bad ignition switch that acted similar, although the battery always showed good voltage.

Guess I'll need to carry a voltmeter for a while.

 

I would remove, inspect , clean and re tighten the Earths first .

 

+1. I have had your exerience and it was a bad negative connection on the cable. I wound up removing both cables completely, cleaned all terminal ends as well as connection points with wire brush and emory cloth, applied dielectric grease to all 4 cable ends, and haven’t had the problem again. It is a PITA to do, but the problem was a bigger PITA.

 

2006, I would replace both battery cables, the ground especially take a lot of abuse. I fund this when I replaced mine. Insulation had it covered, looked fine till I took it apart and peeled back the insulation. If they are original cable if you do decide to replace them get at least a couple of inches longer, makes it easier when checking tightness and such.

 

Positive and negative cables move the same amount of current, making them equally important.

 

Very true, but with the location and the way the ground is attached to the motor it sees a lot of movement in a bad way, especially since Moco made the cable only just long enough.