Pointy Electrics - battery, regulator, stator blah

[Zim]

Bike broke down last night and I had to be recovered by the RAC, the full bike strapped to a recovery truck and 2 hour journey saga.

Anyway, about 30 seconds before it went dead, the fuel light came on (it was full of petrol), and "FI" came up on the clocks and SOS CHEC (actually it might have been fave past five as in 5:05! Talk about unfortunate timing). While I was pondering if the bike had gone into F1 (formula 1) mode, and whether someone could really have drained the petrol without damaging the tank, Ftuuuuuuuummmmmmm and it was dead, a sad, lifeless metal corpse.

The bike wouldn't restart even though the lights were working. I suspected that the bike hadn't been charging and the battery was so low that the electrics weren't getting enough juice.

The RAC chappy said it was probably the regulator and had it been earlier (or should I say, perhaps if the RAC had got someone out quicker!) he'd have popped over the bike shop with me, grabbed a new one fitted it. Well that didn't happen as it was gone 7pm by the time he got out to me.

Anyway I've been doing a load of reading, and there's a lot not just here but everywhere on the web and I'm a bit perplexed by the sheer amount of possibilities from not just about testing batteries/stators/regulators, but also if it's the reg then replacing it with a new version of the same unit, to upgrading to a mosfet as they run cooler and blah blah blah blah


Couple of Q's though:

1: Given the sheer number of posts on diagnosing charging stuff, anyone have an opinion on the best one for a beginner and wannabe better DIYer pointy owner to use? (e.g. do I test everything methodically, or just go straight to the reg as they seem to explode with such regularity).

2: Wondering where the weight of opinion lies on whether upgrading the regulator to a mosfet based one is worth the time and effort

[Bibio]

i would start by charging the battery to full capacity then seeing if the bike will turn over. if pressing the starter wont turn the bike over then it's more likely to be an electrical wiring fault rather than the RegRec. usually when a regrec goes it will drain the battery to keep the bike running until there is not enough charge in the battery to supply the currant to the ECU/coils at which point the bike splutters and puffs to a stop. a sudden loss of power and i would be looking at the bikes wiring loom and connectors for breaks, burns and furred up terminals.

[Zim]

Bike starts fine from a recharged battery, and purrs like a, well not a kitten, snores like gorilla (as it should).

[shiftin_gear98]

Does your bike have an alarm? Mine did.


Good luck, sounds like you avoided pushing the bugger.

[Zim]

No alarm.

Pushing from London to Gloucestershire was never going to happen!

[shiftin_gear98]

Not sure I would have been up for that either.
Hope you sort it out, wiring can be a faff - mine was.

[Bibio]

how old is the battery?

although a battery can be fully charged it can also be degraded so that it wont kick out the amps it used to and the charge wont last long. its fairly uncommon for the regrec to fail on the pointy and i would be looking at the connectors and wiring to and fro the regrec for signs of damage.

[Zim]

Battery is original from early 2009. I've plugged the optimate in, I presume that will attempt to get it back up to full charge.

[Zim]

Left the optimate working on the battery overnight. just went out to check and it was all green lights, meaning it's holding charge above 12.5V for more than 30 minutes at a time.

Bike fired up just lovely and seemed responsive enough despite being a tad cold.

I haven't got a lot of time to diagnose anything for a few days but I'll start working through some of the tests in the articles I've seen when I have a moment.