'99 SVS Cranked and cranked... then all electrical died..

Hi all,

I have a '99 SV bought this spring. The last 2 months it's been parked in an undergroud garage and covered... because I was away travelling.

Last night I got home and tried to fire it up. Turned key to ON, gave it some choke, and cranked it over. I cranked it 3 times about 5 seconds each, then everything went dead. Not even a click to indicate a bad starter or weak battery. Headlights went off, guages went dark, brake-lights/horn/signals don't work. The bike didn't fire at all when cranking.. but I expected it to take a bit of work (can carb/gas go bad in 2 months sitting in the summer? I didn't think so). But the electrical part has me stumped.

When it was turning over it was fast and didn't sound sluggish (battery is supposedly new this year). I tested all fuses under the seat this morning (visually and with a multimeter), and the battery shows 12.6v. I even swapped each fuse with 2 spares with no success. It doesn't matter if the key is in the ON or PARK positions, no lights ever turn on anywhere on the bike anymore.

I'm no mechanic, but I do have the tools to get the seat/tank/bodywork off. Is there any other single-point-of-failure I can test?

Actually, I just thought... ...all power must run through the keyswitch, in order for the key to turn the bike on and off... so I should be looking for a loose wiring harnass up front?

I've been waiting months to ride again... if anybody can suggest some troubleshooting tips I would be eternally grateful.

Regards,

Mike

Strange Update:

I sat down with the electrical schematic (http://www.sv650.org/SV_service_manu...cal_System.pdf - page 12) and a multimeter, and started to trace out where the power was going, starting from the + of the battery all the way through.

I know the connection to ground works (traced it from the - terminal to the frame, the voltage from the + terminal to anywhere on the frame is 12.7ish volts)

I know the power is going through the primary 30a fuse, and out to the key/ignition on the red wire (as shown in the manual). I know there's continuity out that red wire, through the key, and back through the orange wire to a 10a fuse in the fusebox under the seat.

Then something funny happens, and I'm not sure what it means.

The voltage leading out the 30a fuse to the key is 12.7v. When I measure from the - terminal to the 10a fuse in the fusebox when the keyswitch is _off_... there's no power (duh! . When I turn the key _on_, I see a brief spike in voltage to around 0.6v, within 5 seconds settling down to +-0.4v, where it stays. Unless there's some voltage regulator under the airbox I can't see, or in the key/ignition, I'd expect this to show 12.7v, right?. With the key on and measuring directly across the + to - on the battery I also see 0.4v as well. Hmmm....

Also, if I turn the keyswitch to _parking_, the voltage goes up to around 6.0v.. but it's intermittent (may dives down to around 4.0v). At 6v my rear taillights glow dimly (they're LED). Once for about 20 seconds while I was watching it (doing nothing else) it went up to around 11.0v, at which point my neutral light also glowed dimly and I saw a brief flash from my signals, then it dove back down to 6.0v again.

So, not really understanding electronics, my 2 guesses are:

a) Something in the key/ignition is broken, and it's affecting both the on and parking settings (the on setting being worse). Would a "short circuit" (crossed wires?) show up as a voltage drop of 12.7->0.4v? I thought short circuits lead to things getting hot and melting or catching fire?

b) Although the battery looks fine at 12.7v (no load), it really is busted, and can't hold the voltage with any load. Thinking back (it's been over 2 months now) I think the primary difference between "on" and "parking" settings is that parking doesn't use the headlights. So when "on" there's high load (lots of voltage drop?) and the bike appears dead with the headlights in the loop. But the parking setting is mostly the low-power LED taillights and the small neutral light that I see between 6.0 and 11ish volts.

Do either of these sound plausible?

Time for me to find that new battery, or a jump from a car....

Thanks!

Mike

[timwilky]

sounds like your batterycould have gone, I take it that you didn't leave the bike for two months with the keyswitch in park?, and drain the battery.

Although you say it was a recently new battery, chances are the battery could have been changed because of a mis diagnosis of a faulty RR.

If it were me, get a jump off a car. Once the bike is running you can then properly check the battery and charging system.

[jambo]

Batterys do not hold charge for months at a tme, Voltage and current are different, it's possible for a battery to show 14V and yet not have enough current to run the bike's systems. Before buying anything I would strongly recomend just charging the battery, putting it back in and trying again.

While the battery's charging you can check for rubbish in the carb float bowls, chean the plugs and put them back in and generally give it a hand firing back up to life.

Hi all,

I did pull the battery and put it on a 1.5a automatic trickle charger. It took 90 minutes for the charger to go from "charging" to "done". My previous post where I was checking voltages was done after putting the charged battery back in the bike.

Oh, how I wish this was just a fuse...

Regards,

Mike

I just came back from jumping the bike from a car. As soon as the car was cabled up I keyed it on and the dash lit up. After about the 4th stab at the starter it hesitantly thumped to life. It would _barely_ keep itself running at full choke (which would normally spin it up to a fast idle). It continued to run when unhooked from the car... but any throttle and the engine would stumble... and any backing off from full choke it would hesitate as well.

After letting it run itself for about a minute I started to give it tiny blips of throttle to see if I could wake it up... but after a few tries it stalled. And with only the old battery attached it was as dead as before.

I'm going to assume it ran poorly because the charging system was fighting a war with a bad battery (and fuel going on 3 months old).... so I'll replace it with a new battery and top off the tank with fresh gas tomorrow.

(I'm hoping it wasn't running that way because the ignition system could barely provide it's own spark)

Thanks for all the suggestions!

Mike