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Old 24-01-05, 04:53 PM   #13
embee
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Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Warwickshire
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Hi Aaron
since this is clearly giving you grief I'll just add my 2p, though it's basically what the others have said.

Your battery appears to have only a part charge left after a couple of days, so either it is not charging fully or it's discharging when the bike's off. The other possibility is that the battery is duff, not impossible even for new batteries to fail but probably low on the list. You could have a wiring fault in the generator circuit so it can produce enough voltage to charge with no load, but not enough current to run lights etc.

You need to determine which of these is the problem.

It'd be worth getting a cheap multimeter, Maplins do them for less than £10 which will do fine. Make sure it has a DC current capability of 10Amps, then it will be more useful.

Do what Philbo recommends, measure the "quiescent" current from the positive terminal on the battery to the pos cable with the bike switched off as it would normally be left (disconnect the battery cable and put the meter on "DC Amps" between them, check it's the right way round, start with it on a high current range and switch down as necessary to get a proper reading, and don't short anything out on the frame!!). As said, if it's more than single figure milli-amps it could well be your problem.

If it's OK, check the charging. Run the bike, lights on, DC Volts measuring the battery voltage. At 1300rpm idle you should see somewhere round 11 or 12 volts min, depending how well charged the battery is.

Rev it up to 4000rpm or so, and you should see over 14volts (the service manual says 13.5-15V at 5000rpm).

Regulator/rectifiers are known to be a weak item, so could well be the culprit.

There's a good trouble-shooting guide in the Electrical section of the Service Manual.
http://www.sv650.org/sv_manuals.htm
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