04 Road King starting issue, battery good.

[orange68]

Went out to ride the 04 Road King the other day and it wouldn't start. I unplugged the battery tender prior to attempting start. The tender light was green. When I hit the started button the bike would spin over enough to start. The battery was purchased on Oct last year ( HD battery).
Took the battery back to HD and they charged the battery and said it was good. Came home and put it in the bike and the bike started right up, voltage was reading about 14 volts when checked at battery while running. A few minutes later attempted to start the bike and the battery would not spin the engine over enough to start it. The I checked the battery voltage and it reads approx. 12.7 sitting and when I hit the started button it drops to about 4.5 volts. Checked all battery cables and ground all seem to be good. Please someone help as I am not sure where to check next.

 

[dbmg]

When the dealer checked battery do you know if they load tested battery. They probably just charged battery because voltage was low. It needs load tested. I would think if bike has been ok then problem points to battery. If a high resistance was causing battery voltage to fall off like that you should be able to tell what the fault is.

 

[Chopper]

Sure sounds like a bad battery, maybe a intermitted problem with the battery? Dealers have a state of the art battery tester they have to have for waranty work and is pretty much fool proof but all the techs are not state of the art & tools are only good as the person using them, I would explain to what happen to the dealer and have them retest it to be sure. Possable it could be something else but I have seen a lot of batteries do just what you described.

 

[fin_676]

If the voltage drops that much then i would suspect that there are a few bad cells in the battery
get it tested by someone that knows how to do a load test

Brian

 

[Jack Klarich]

If this is not a sealed battery I bet a hygrometer test would show a bad cell, I would have it load tested again

 

[TQuentin1]

I assume you did the easy stuff and cleaned both mating surfaces of both ends of both cables, right?

TQ

 

[orange68]

Cleaned both battery terminals, both looked good though. Removed the ground cable and made sure it had a good connection as well.
I have charged the battery overnight and plan on taking it to auto zone for another load test. If bad, I plan a trip back to HD since the battery has 50% warrenty since it is still within the one year warrenty.

 

[Hoople]

I think it's a bad battery also but it's also strange your 2009 bike needed a new battery in the first 18 months of it's life.
Wonder what happened to the original battery. It was cut short also.

 

[TripleJ]

Cleaned both battery terminals, both looked good though. Removed the ground cable and made sure it had a good connection as well.
I have charged the battery overnight and plan on taking it to auto zone for another load test. If bad, I plan a trip back to HD since the battery has 50% warrenty since it is still within the one year warrenty.

TQ suggested cleaning BOTH ends of BOTH cables and from what I read here you may have missed one connection? Aside from that, if you are checking the fully charged battery directly at the battery posts while cranking and come up with 4.5 volts, that battery is definately a problem. Hopefully your dealer will make good on the warranty.

 

[Jack Klarich]

One more question, is the connection at the starter clean and tight?