Okay, so I crunched some plastic and a headlight back in December on my 2023. Ordered complete brand new fairing, pulled everything apart, found more broken shit, ordered more parts, put it all back together, got another broken part in, pulled it all back together.

Last week it started fine. I pulled the upper cowling to swap it out (the original order arrived busted, but I glued it and carried on) and put everything back. I tried to start it. I put key in, everything lights up, sounds good. Hit the starter, everything dies. Check battery: 2.5v. Okay, that’s odd. Put it on the charger, pull it off, reads 13.7V. I put in key, hit starter, bam, everything dead, 2.5V.

Is my battery done or did I miss a connection putting the upper cowling together? The only other thing I did was add a usb port, but that shouldn’t be drawing enough current to kill the battery without blowing the inline fuse.

Any insight would be appreciated.

tr0g

So key on, shows all lights, right? Ever run a volt meter at the leads to watch the action?

I'd recharge it, run the voltmeter to the leads, key on, what are the volts reading now? Say it drops a lot with key on only. Now I'd set the stop light on and sustain. Watt are the volts reading now after say 3 or 4 minutes. Set the winkers on too, high beam also. That's plenty of battery load tests. What's it saying now?

Volts means PUSH. Takes a lot of reserve to run the Push to turn the motor over. Kind of strange to see 13+ in the static and 2v in the end. So that's 2x6 = 12. That's 5 dead blocks? Year and then some months of an OEM should last 5yrs at least.

Anyway, Temp gun on the battery leads when hitting the starter. Should spike skin burn temps. After all, you said no fuses blown, no wire hookup cooking or check these with a temp gun and rule that out.

Trying to get to the same page thinking this out, meaning, are you following the bad battery so far?

I forgot to grease the neg lead to the battery. It white sulfured and when I hit the starter, I got zip. Now thinking you can catch the posi lead at the battery, but not check to see if the neg lead has been sulfated, but rather use the charger lead to the neg cable off the battery to the frame's ground.

Is that how you charged it or took it out to charge? Lettuce loophole the bike and use a set of jumper cables off the battery to the starter motor itself. A bench load test without pulling the motor out. Just clamp the motor lead first. Hard tap the jumper's ground cable to the bare part of the frame. It's going to arc so hide it or not. This way, watching the battery volts drop dead narrows out the bike's assembly and/or USB install.

So are we seeing how to load test the battery instead of bringing it to an auto store and let them test it? Pick the easiest way,

Thanks, Hub. I'll take a look at some of these tomorrow or Sunday. I got laid off on Tuesday, so fixing the bike took a back seat these past couple of days.

Okay, went back to basics and the cable that runs from the negative battery terminal to the frame was loose at the battery terminal. Torqued that back up and we’re good to go. I also discovered it has electrical tape wrapped around it about halfway down and peeling back the tape looks like the insulation is cut? I doubt it came from the factory that way so I may need to order another one of those when I get a payday again. I also need to order a few welnuts because these cheapo aftermarket ones suuuuck.