Battery discharging after headlight relay install

[Motorhobo]

I recently did the easy Eastern Beaver install, i.e. power to battery positive, cold to battery negative with the inline fuse on the power cable, plug in to existing wiring in the headlight can. Now it seems the battery is discharging while the bike is standing -- after 24 hours down time it barely turns over and the ABS light flashes. After running for a while it charges back up. This didn't happen before the relay install. Battery is a couple years old. I'll keep it on the battery tender but that's not ideal...ideal is when you don't have to do that. Anybody have an idea what gives?

[rbm]

You might also try talking to Eastern Beaver to see if they know of the cause.

On k100-forum, this was happening to TSTB and he solved it by replacing the ABS relay.  You should measure the current draw from the battery positive terminal with the bike off (use an ammeter).  It should normally read 2-4 mA.  I bet if you measure yours, it will be in the 130 - 140 mA range.  If so, first remove your EB kit and test again.  If the current draw reduces, you've found the source of the problem but need to investigate the path current is taking to ground.  If the current draw is still large, remove the ABS relay and test again.

[bocutter Ed]

He's known here as TSBT. ;-)

[Motorhobo]

You might also try talking to Eastern Beaver to see if they know of the cause.

On k100-forum, this was happening to TSTB and he solved it by replacing the ABS relay.  You should measure the current draw from the battery positive terminal with the bike off (use an ammeter).  It should normally read 2-4 mA.  I bet if you measure yours, it will be in the 130 - 140 mA range.  If so, first remove your EB kit and test again.  If the current draw reduces, you've found the source of the problem but need to investigate the path current is taking to ground.  If the current draw is still large, remove the ABS relay and test again.

Oh crap. There's no way I'm going to get to this any time soon, my plate is already so full it's blowing ch1t all over the garage. It will have to stay on the tender for a while. But in case it is what rbm indicates it might be, where do I source an ABS relay? In the k100 thread these guys seem to have them just lying around like Xmas ornaments, which l definitely do not.

In the meantime I'll google ammeter and see if I have one. All I have is a multimeter. I don't know if the multi also includes the amm.

[pdg]

It would be very unusual for a multlumeter to not have an ammeter function...

Read the instructions though, or put a pic of your meter up here and I/someone will tell you how to connect it up if you don't know (like someone who refused help a while ago put an ammeter directly across the battery - bet it looked fairly pretty for 0.03 seconds).

[rbm]

In that thread I referenced, there is a description of how to use a multimeter (WITHOUT an ammeter function) as an ammeter.  Simply obtain a 1 Ohm 10 Watt resistor and put it in series with the circuit you want to measure current.  Read the voltage across the resistor using the voltmeter function of your multimeter.  The voltage measured will be equal to the current in Amperes.

[Motorhobo]

I saw that about the ammeter. Before I get involved in anything electrical, I'm going to do a lot of reading and watch some videos...it will be a while before I do anything hands on with this. I guess it's high time I got my hands dirty with electrons, though. I've been dreading it...don't like dealing with things I can't see.

More later...thanks folks!

[Motorhobo]

Ok -- draw with bike off is 0.95 mA. Battery voltage is 12.8V even after being off the tender for several hours. In the meantime, the starter isn't turning even after being tended overnight. It's been that way now for a couple weeks -- last couple times I rode it the starter was barely turning the bike over and the ABS light flashed, so the starter action has been getting progressively weaker over the past few weeks. The draw is 0.95mA whether the EB headlight relay is connected to the battery or not. Now, not enough power to starter to turn engine over...it clicks and hums, sounds like the way a bad solenoid in a car would sound.

I pulled the starter, cleaned the commutators, the brushes look fine. Lights are full on. All other systems seem to be getting full power, just not the starter. The relay box under the tank doesn't appear to have the same layout as the ABS I layout depicted here  -- http://www.motobrick.com/index.php?topic=536.msg30714#msg30714...

Any ideas? Thanks for any help...

[rbm]

If you used the series resistor trick to measure the current draw, can you confirm that you measured 0.00095 volts across the resistor or did you read 0.95 Volts?

[kioolt]

If you used the series resistor trick to measure the current draw, can you confirm that you measured 0.00095 volts across the resistor or did you read 0.95 Volts?

The formula for this is I=E/R where I is current in amps, E is volts, and R is resistance in ohms.  Being so a reading of .95volts is 950ma of current not .95ma.

[johnny]

i=e/r... aints thats murphees lawl...

j o

[Motorhobo]

I set the Multimeter to mA, plugged in the probes and read it off the digital readout. First I read it as amps and it read .001, then as mA as 0.95. Does that reading not make sense? Isn't that more or less what the clock draws?

[kioolt]

I set the Multimeter to mA, plugged in the probes and read it off the digital readout. First I read it as amps and it read .001, then as mA as 0.95. Does that reading not make sense? Isn't that more or less what the clock draws?

The two readings you got are not the same.  95ma is equal to .095 amps.  How did you hook up the meter to the bike?  Ammeters are inserted in series with the wiring on the bike.

[Motorhobo]

The amp reading was 1/1000 of the mA reading rounded up to the next 1000th, as expected -- the DMM can't read accuracy to he thousandth on the amp setting -- that's why they have the mA setting for low current.

I disconnected the negative lead, put the two DMM probes in series between the neg battery terminal and the neg lead as shown in several videos I watched. That's how I got the .95 mA reading. Did the same thing on the positive side just to be thorough, same reading.

[kioolt]

Yes that is correct.  I'm getting a little slower in my old age.  For the future, it's not necessary to measure both sides of the battery.  They will always be equal.

[Inge K.]

then as mA as 0.95. Does that reading not make sense? Isn't that more or less what the clock draws?

 :clap: fyi, did measure the clock to 0,85 mA some time back.

[Motorhobo]

Ok -- battery still at 12.6V being comnected overnight so no parasitic draw.

So before I make myself crazy swapping parts from one bike to the other to track this down, I seem to remember testing the starter on the bench a while back by connecting battery power to the main lead on the starter and grounding to a point on the base of the starter. If that should crank the starter -- it doesn't.

So -- shouldn't that crank the starter and if it should, what else besides the brushes and commutators do I need to check? Brushes look fine and I cleaned commutators yesterday with 600grit and contact cleaner leaving them nice n shiny.

[kioolt]

Yes that should make the starter turn over.  It's just a matter of doing a continuity check on the commutator since you say the brushes are ok.  If I remember correctly these starters are permanent magnet starters so there is no field coil to check.

[Motorhobo]

I went ahead and swapped the starter from the running K75 into the non-running one -- the running one fired right up, the non-running one still has the same symptoms. So I'm closing out this thread and starting a new one, since this isn't a battery discharging issue and the problem isn't with the starter.