Hey all, I hope everyone's enjoying the weather these days!!! Having said that....I'm a bit stumped and could some advice. So over the winter I decided to change our the stereo system......stereo and speakers. I ended up going with a JVC media(no cd) head unit, 5.25" Rockford Fosgate Punch in the batwing and 6.5" Punch in the lowers - both powered by a Punch PBR300X4 amp, and 5.25" Punch in the tour pack powered by a PBR300X2 amp. Now I'm a pretty good installer and can follow directions when needed, so it is bugging the crap out of me that I can't figure out why my battery keeps draining. I had no battery issues before all this, so I know it's related, but I've double-checked and triple-checked and about find nothing that isn't where or how it's supposed to be!!!! Does anyone out there have any clue or idea about what could be the issue or where I should look that I may have overlooked? Thanks in advance to anyone who offers advice!!!!

 

May have looked at this already but what about the amp trigger wire? Probably not the right term but last I messed with my setup it was the blue wire that controls the on/off function for the amp. If its connection isn’t good, or the wire has been damaged, the amp may not get the signal to shut down.

 

Sounds like some sort of parasitic drain related to the new install as you suspected.

You can try asking in the audio section of the forum. There are quite a few genius peeps over there that can prob help you out.

 

You should be chasing it down using a multimeter, to find where there is still a power drain after everything is 'switched off'. It'll be bloomin' obvious once you find it! In the meantime the suggestion above is a good step to take.

 

Never mind.

 

Tell us model and year of bike. A guessing game is not going to solve this, troubleshooting will.

Perform a Parasitic Battery Drain test:

Disconnect the negative battery cable

Set meter to read amps

Touch one probe to battery negative post, the other probe to the battery cable terminal.

How many milliamps does the meter read?

 

Ditto, bike model and year. Also, AGM or lead cell battery.

Hence if you have an alarm system on the bike, it will be drawing the battery down when the bike is off.

Older bike with the two wire stator/voltage regulator, and AGM battery, and the battery is not being charged until the voltage comes up to around 14.1 volts, or held 2K rmp's or above. Throw in the added amp demand that may be drawing 40 amps each (80 amp draw), on a 30 amp charging system, and the charging system is just trying to keep up with the amps as it draining the battery down, with nothing left to charge up the battery isntead.

To really back it up, take a look at the specs per amp,
https://www.rockfordfosgate.com/prod...ails/pbr300x4/

It calling out for a 75 amp alternator for just one of the amps, max draw is 40 amps per amp, so the two amps could be drawing up to 80 amps just them selves. Throw in another 20 amp for the rest of the bikes need, and would need a 100amp charging system to keep up with the demands of the system and bikes need.

The best I am finding is a 54 amp systems that will put that out at 4K rpms for the Harly's, and if we reserve say 20 amps for the bike, than that leave around 20 amps mid RPMS for the charging system to keep up with the amps and keep the battery charged.

So my suggestion after upgrading your charging system to a 54 amps 3 wire system, instead of running so many channels/amps, find an clean 2 channel amp with 20 amp fu,se that will work down to a 2 ohm load, to run the two channel amp that you can passively cross over and balance to the 6 speaker system isntead.
Hence with a single Sound Steam D200 class A amp, I can hit 139db 20~20K with less than .01TDH at a 2 ohm load, with 26 amp max draw from the amp.

Simply as it is now, the battery is being drained down to a dam near dead state every time you have the stereo at any kind of sound level, and this is what is doing the battery in so quickly as well. You could put the bike on a tender to charge the battery back up with the bike is not running (and add a second battery to give the bike some more reserve power), but still, all these dam near drained battery states every time you ride the bike, its going to do the AGM battery(s) in quickly since there is no way for the charging system to keep up with the sound system power demands in the first place.

 

Couple of things. You didn't exactly say in what time frame your battery is draining. Do you have it on a tender? Is it possible that the battery life is coincidental to your install? Maybe you were going to need a new battery regardless and the new audio system just expedited that issue. But to me, most importantly, there is always going to be a small amount of parasitic draw so battery should always be on a tender when not being ridden.

 

First off trouble shoot your charging system. Your voltage regulator could be bad drawing power to ground while the bikes off.

 

My bad! For whatever reason it never dawned on me to mention what I have! It's a 2001 Ultra Classic. As for the charging system, I was told by the H-D dealer that t.d charging system had been upgraded by the previous owner....to what I don't know and neither did they. As for the parasitic draw test...does anyone know what the "actual draw" should be for a touring bike? I know it won't be zero, and I know it would be greater than .08 like maybe smaller bike with little to no accessories, but that's as far as my knowledge there goes! Thanks again!