Thread: Motorcycle Electrical Help

EDITL Sorry this turned out to be a really long thread so if you want the gist, just pop down to the last two paragraphs.

So Im having issues bringing my bike out of hibernation this year. Its a 2005 Suzuki GS500FK with about 12k miles. This will be my 4th or 5th season riding. I do regular maintenance on the bike -- oil changes, chain lube, winterizing (fuel stabilizer, trickle charger, cover, indoors). Well this winter was especially warm so I was riding a decent amount and never put fuel stabilizer in. I did however have it on the trickle charger.

Well I go to start it about a week or two ago and the starter just keeps clicking but never turns over. I was able to jump it with my car battery (I know stupid, but just wanted to get it started to see if having it run for about 15 min would help) but grounded the negative contact on the frame and not the battery (someone online suggested this). It started but would not hold a steady rev and every time I decelerated, it would back fire. About 3 minutes of jerking around in 1st/2nd gear with the backfires, the bike completely dies. No lights, no horn, no battery.

I get it towed and call the shop I usually take it to and go through everything above. He says that the trickle charger might not be powerful enough (it was only 750mA) and that he has heard of a lot of people having issues with it. (Battery Tender Junior 12V @ 0.75A - Motorcycle - Batterytender.com) So I head to the store and get a 1.5A 12V charger, refill the battery with distilled water and let it charge for about 3 or 4 days. Today I finally put the battery back in the bike, turn the key to ON and........ nothing. No lights, no horn, no battery.

Pull out my multimeter and the battery is giving a charge of about 12.7V. I check the main fuse and its still in tact. I detach the lighting relay and instrument panel wires from the fuse casing that houses the starter switch, connect the battery again, and am getting over 12V. Its when I reconnect the relay and instrument cluster that I found an issue. I put the multimeter back on the batter and find that when I switch it to ON, the voltage drops down to 0.15V.

Google around and the general consensus is that its a bad battery. Take it to an auto parts shop and they test it on a load tester and they say its good. It handles a load just fine. So the question to my incredibly long story is where do I go from here? Do I get a new battery and hope thats the issue or is there something sucking 12V?

I would hook a battery from something else up to it (car, mower, etc) cause I have never been happy with parts store part testers. They say this or that is good but it doesnt work worth jack on my truck... So I would test with a different battery but as death said also check your ignition switch. But it sounds like a classic dead battery to me.

I did some work on my prom dates Honda CB360T and both me and my dad couldnt figure out why it would barely run without the battery. Couldnt get it to rev off idle at all. Kicked the starter on that more times than I want to count.... Put a new fresh charged battery into it and hit the starter button and it kicked over and set right into high idle. So some bikes just wont run without a well charged battery. Best of luck to ya!