Battery drain

[Bodeen]

Harley Davidson Community

 

[Hoople]

My friend said a regulator "CAN'T drain the batt when bike is off. Only when running".

Your friend is wrong. There are dozens of internal VR components that can leak current to ground when they are bad or going bad.

What Bodeen recommends in reply # 4 has you covered.
Your battery could be toast. As Jack recommends, remove it, slow charge it overnight and then load test it at 150 amps with a carbon pile.

Install a known good/charged battery and insert a MA meter inline with the positive cable. You will always have some parasitic drain (drain with everything turned off) on any late model FI bike. It should be under 25 MA but you probably could live with as much as 40 MA if you added anything that may have "keep alive" power. A stock FI Dyna without security will have a very low drain in the 10 MA range.

A bad ignition switch is a prime candidate. But before changing any parts (other than the battery), or unplugging any connectors, perform the drain test with a meter. First determine what the problem is using a meter and performing a couple of basic tests. The worst thing you could do at this point is to just randomly start checking or replacing individual parts..

If you don't do the work yourself, ask the person that will do it, how they will find the problem. The very first thing he should say is " we first need to determine if you even have excessive drain to start with,, and then I will measure it to see how large it is".

 

[ickysticky74]

Your friend is wrong. There are dozens of internal VR components that can leak current to ground when they are bad or going bad.

What Bodeen recommends in reply # 4 has you covered.
Your battery could be toast. As Jack recommends, remove it, slow charge it overnight and then load test it at 150 amps with a carbon pile.

Install a known good/charged battery and insert a MA meter inline with the positive cable. You will always have some parasitic drain (drain with everything turned off) on any late model FI bike. It should be under 25 MA but you probably could live with as much as 40 MA if you added anything that may have "keep alive" power. A stock FI Dyna without security will have a very low drain in the 10 MA range.

A bad ignition switch is a prime candidate. But before changing any parts (other than the battery), or unplugging any connectors, perform the drain test with a meter. First determine what the problem is using a meter and performing a couple of basic tests. The worst thing you could do at this point is to just randomly start checking or replacing individual parts..

If you don't do the work yourself, ask the person that will do it, how they will find the problem. The very first thing he should say is " we first need to determine if you even have excessive drain to start with,, and then I will measure it to see how large it is".

@Hoople Thanks for your great knowledge. I appreciate the advice. The battery is dead and wont hold a charge. The dang thing isn't even a year old. Oh Well its my fault I should of addressed the issue over the summer.