Riding with headlights on kills battery

Hi all.

The issue I have is that when I ride with the headlights on, this kills the battery. As soon as I stop and try to restart the bike, there is not even enough life left in the battery to turn it over. If I ride the bike without using the headlights I have no problems. I want to be able to ride the bike at night as well as with the lights on during the day for the safety aspect.

I have oxford heated grips and an intercom power lead wired into the ignition system, but when these are used they have no effect on the battery life. This has left me baffled

I have done a few searches on here but unable to find any info.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Viney]

wooooooooo spoooooky. I am having EXACTLY the same issue at this very moment. Wierd. Anyway after much checking with a multimeter it turns out that my charging system is a little weak and mine has come down to the Alternator.

So you need to just check the output from the battery, alternator, and rectifier to check which part is at fault.

The Most of the checking can be done by removing the rear seat unit plastics from the bike as this is where the rectifier is along with the plug from the alternator.

Some numbers for you

Battery - around 12.9v if healthy and part charged, more if possible (No engine running)
Battery Engine running - 14v+, And under load (Healights on main beam) 13.9v+
Earth leakage (Negative removed and between the lead and Negative teminal) - Less than 1ma
Alternator charge (plug by rectifier with 3 yellow wires, Unplug this and measure across all 3 pins), should be around 0.6ohms, and @5000rpm, around 70vAC

I hope this makes some sense.

[Sid Squid]

Search for testing the charging system. The bike may not be charging the battery properly, or the battery itself may be duff.

[Spanner Man]

Good morning all.


Often in cases where the bike charges ok with the lights off, & not with them on, one finds that the alternator stator is shorting to earth.
Make sure you check for continuity between the three output wires of the alternator & earth. You should have infinite resistance.


Cheers.

Thanks all, hopefully I'll get to have a good look at it on Sunday. Weather permitting.

[Viney]

Ah! Well i changed the windings on the bike last night, checked all the volatges and all that should be checked and the blasted bike died this morning 500 yards from work. Had to push the damn thing to the car park slope to bump it, in todays swealtering heat!!

Hmmm, back to that drawing board that everyone goes on about.

[gruntygiggles]

This is the same problem I have been having with the babyblade.....but then last night, rode it to Weston lights off in the middle of the group to see how it would start when we wanted to leave. It started fine on all the daylight stops (had jump leads in the boot just in case). Then, about 10 minutes out of Weston, had too turn the lights on as natural light started to fade, still started no problem.

After having to stop for a nice policeman after doing 115k home up the motorway and the A420 where I needed high beam most of the time, it still fired up no problem.

So....after having taken the reg/rec off yesterday to get readings from it, I am beginning to believe that it may have not been clipped in to the terminal (or whatever you call it) properly.

Taking the bike this morning to have the electrics checked...will report back later, but as a girl that has never done anything on a bike before I can assure you, taking the tail plastics off and checking this stuff is very easy

[Viney]

My plan is this

Revert back to standard bulbs
Beg, Borrow, Buy, Steal a batter charger and charge battery
Run to see how it goes
If fail, then replace Rectifier
If that fails replace battery!
If that fails, take to a corner douse in peterol and ignite!...poor doris

[Biker Biggles]

Id spend about £10 on a multimeter first to find out what the underlying problem is,then douse it with petrol and ignite.

[Viney]

BB with all due respect, dont you think that i would have done all that? Even the Squid has looked at it, and much head scrathing was had as nothing was really a miss! Its very odd. The output from the alternator was slightly down, hence the change of that. Then as i say its the battery then rectifier, then it cant be anything else really, hence the Petrol/match interface (Which i wouldnt do to Doris anyway)