Recently purchased used iron with 2800 miles on it, and on my way home today the engine and battery lights came on. As I was about 2 blocks from home, the engine was revving like crazy (pretty high rpms with clutch fully pulled in). When I parked the bike and tried to restart it, nothing. I get the lights on, but it won't turn over when I hit the starter button. Any thoughts?

 

Wondering if I just need to take it to the stealership and have them diagnose it/fix it, or if there's something quick I can do to fix it if you've had this issue before.

 

More than likely, you have a bad stator and/or regulator. I'd take it back to the dealer under warranty.

 

That'd be great if it was still under warranty. Apparently, it only had the short warranty on it, and he did not extend.

 

Am I looking at about a grand for that kind of fix?

 

Did you look at the battery cables (both ends/pos & neg) to ensure they're tight and not "arching" on anything?

 

Obviously check all of the usual stuff like battery connection, ground, coils, plug wires, fuse box, etc... (check for water too).

Maybe you will get lucky and find something is loose or wet, but if not, I would take my bike in for behavior that crazy.

 

Thanks, guys. i checked all the normal stuff, and it all seems to check out. I'm hoping this isn't a bad omen to a new bike. I'm gonna get it towed to the dealership on Tuesday since they're all closed on Mondays around me.

 

**Update** So, before I was going to drop any cash, I hooked up the battery tender, and.....voila! After an all night charge, then some trickle, it started right up and no more issues. I guess the battery had gotten fairly low from the previous owner not riding for a month or so, and it didn't recharge (I'm mostly short rides, like 20 miles per day) We'll see if I have the same issue again, then I'll have the dealer check the stator and regulator if it refuses to keep a charge.

 

You can monitor the health of the battery by measuring the voltage at the battery terminals (or at the plug in for your battery tender adaptor if you installed one) every morning after the bike has sat all night.

If you see the voltage slowly dropping from day to day or week to week, be aware that is an indication that your battery is being drained a bit more than its being charged.

Its a pretty good idea to plug it into the tender every night, but before I did that, I would want to have completely ruled out a charging issue.