Last week: After putting in a new battery, I rode 60mi mostly at highway speeds and had 11.65V on the battery upon arriving home. Enough to buzz the relay but not enough to fire the starter.
R/R and stator tested as good, using the method referred elsewhere on the site (super helpful) but I didn’t run the bike too long or too hot, so wondering if one or both are semi-failing under higher load.
So I installed this:
Voltage meter plugs into my battery tender outlet. BF designed and 3D printed the housing. Now I have data. (Not watertight or necessarily permanent on this iteration but cost nothing but a bit of time. You can buy weatherproof for about $15.)
Voltage drops abt 2V when turning ignition on, rises when off.
Charged to abt 14V while warming the bike up but ran around 12 once rolling, dropping eventually to abt 10.1. Voltage dropped to 11.5ish in about half an hour and the rest over the next hour or so. First part was more local, second more fast/nonstop.
Charge rose when I was slowing down, ie bike was turning the engine, but lost most of what was put on once I was rolling again. No ride while breaking or downshifting.)
After turning bike off, voltage rose over the next ten minutes or so, topping off at 11.24. Not enough for a start, just a relay buzz. Where was charge being held? Is that the wrong question?
Possible things wrong:
- New lead acid battery. Was older but I put the acid in. Possibly bad? Or just bad timing? Battery died while I was out, but had been questionable so I figured that was the problem and got a new one.
- R/R not working when warm? When rolling the voltage was pretty stable, when stopped and idling it tended to move around (but this is the nature of 3phase power w a digital voltmeter so I wasn’t worried.)
- Stator?
Unrelated. Under the tail plastic. Am I missing fasteners? From the dirt, if so, they’ve been gone awhile. Holes are threaded but bigger diameter than the other ones for the side panels.