Bad turn signal relay?

[rocksandhammers]

Alright guys, want some different opinions before I go ordering replacement parts. Having some electrical issues and I think I have it narrowed down but not sure.

On the way home this afternoon I stopped to fill up with some gas. Filled the tank, got back on the bike and nothing happened when turning the key. No lights of any kind. No start. Nothing. Had just ridden 50 miles home, rode 50 miles to the office this morning. About 400 miles during the holiday weekend. No problems at all.

Checked the battery through the fuse box and it’s still all charged and connected. All the fuses are good. Started checking the ignition switch and I got continuity in the right spots for both on and park. Got continuity across all four wires running out from the switch.

However, as I was working my way out from the ignition switch I got to the turn relay and got nothing. Checked the brown and light blue wires going on/out of the relay and both seem good. But I don’t get any resistance across the relay itself, and if I plug the brown + light blue wires into the relay I don’t get any continuity from one to the other through the relay. Does this indicate the relay has gone to shit? Thanks in advance for the help.

[navigator]

"No lights of any kind. No start. Nothing."
This indicates to me bad battery connections, pull the battery and use sandpaper on any piece or adapter between the actual battery post and where the cables attach, sand the cable ends...both ends.
No sense in checking relays until you have power through the whole system.

[rocksandhammers]

"No lights of any kind. No start. Nothing."
This indicates to me bad battery connections, pull the battery and use sandpaper on any piece or adapter between the actual battery post and where the cables attach, sand the cable ends...both ends.

Would there still be voltage through the system to the fuse box if it was a bad battery connection? I only ask because when testing the voltage from the fuse box the multimeter said there was 12v running through the system.

[navigator]

You said no lights, at a minimum you should have running lights up front, headlight, oil,temp, and neutral lamps.
you could have a bad ignition switch.
You can also have 12v with insufficient amperage.

[rocksandhammers]

Alright. My thinking with the turn relay was that if it was bad the circuit from the ignition switch wouldn’t be complete and I’d get no power through the system while turning the key.

Regardless I’ll try cleaning up all the battery connections as soon as I can tomorrow and report back.

[rocksandhammers]

So now I’m pretty confused. Went through all the connections and cleaned them all up real good with some steel wool (no sandpaper). As I was doing this I put the battery on the charger and it read 2%. I just don’t know how it was that dead when I had read 12V off it just last night after the bike died. I had disconnected it right after checking the voltage to check my connections, so it wasn’t hooked up to anything to drain it. As I had mentioned in the initial post I’ve ridden the fuck out of the bike the last few days with no issues, including a 50 mile ride just before the bike died. Battery is AGM and only a year old. All the connections seemed pretty clean as I was going through them.

Have the battery on the charger now but if it read 2% is it toast at this point? How could I have ridden 500 miles within the last week without it dying if it was a charging problem or connection problem? How did I read 12 V off the system immediately before disconnecting it and have the battery drain over night?

Like I said, just real confused by all this.

[navigator]

AGM batteries will fail catastrophically, good now...useless 5 minutes later.
Lead acid batteries will slowly degrade over time, you notice them going dead.
You can have 12v out of it but not enough amperage to power anything.
You need a high CCA or amp hour rating.
Keep in mind that 8 AAA batteries will deliver 12v, but wont power your motorcycle.
Have the battery LOAD tested at a local auto parts store.

[rocksandhammers]

Alright. I’ll swing by the autozone down the road and see what they say. I thought the lifespan of an agm was supposed to be like 3-5 years?

Any battery recommendations?

[rocksandhammers]

Just got back from Autozone and sure enough the battery is fried. I bought it almost exactly a year ago. Kept it stored inside over the winter, but I didn't keep in on a maintainer during that time so the guy at Autozone said that's probably why it didn't last more than a year and that it's pretty standard for AGM. Is that really true? Would I have gotten more life out of it if I had kept it plugged in all winter? I guess I just thought storing it inside out of the cold was enough, especially since I've gotten around 3000 miles out of it without any problems since then.

Is AGM the best or is there a better alternative? It would really blow if I need to replace the bastard every year since they aren't cheap. I found a thread from a few months ago regarding battery recommendations and motobatt was mentioned several times but their dealer locator website isn't working for me.

[navigator]

Motobatt is a AGM battery, Amazon, ebay, impact battery, and hundreds of others sell them.
Gbat is an Odyssey AGM modified by GMan to fit.
I have 2 Gbats that are over 7 years old, I have 2 Motobatts that are over 4 years old....still kicking.
Your results may vary.
A maintainer does not need to be plugged in constantly over the winter...1 hour per month should suffice.

[rocksandhammers]

Alright I-a electrical gurus, I need your help. Got a new battery last night. Threw it in this morning and started to go through the charging system tests. Ran the first test on the generator output. When reading the battery voltage off the fuse box terminals I was getting 13.75-13.9 v at idle, but didn’t notice any increase when revving up to 5000 rpm. Checked the ac gen no load performance and that seemed fine. Getting well over 65 v when revving. Not sure what the readings are supposed to be but I was picking up some ohms of resistance while checking continuity.

So I guess it all points to the regulator/rectifier. However, the manual has me a little confused on how to check it. Since I have a 2006 I can’t do the test as specified on pg 8-4. Instead I’m supposed to test it per the instructions on pg 24-12. It says to remove the regulator and test the voltage using a multi circuit tester set. I assume that’s a different tool than the multimeter since it says to test voltages after removing it from the bike? I typed that in to google real quick and it brought up a lot of tools that are 100s or 1000s of bucks. Can I bring the regulator to an auto parts store or bike shop and have them test it? Since al the other tests are fine should I just assume the regulator is shot and get a new one or is there an easier way to see if it’s fucked?

[Lechy]

[youtube][/youtube]

[emoji41]

[rocksandhammers]

Thanks a ton Lechey. That really helped explain what the fuck I was actually even doing. My only experience with electrics is working on the bike, and looking at my post history you can see how limited that has been. The manual isn't always the most clear literature on the subject.

Noob question, but just so I'm clear the stator is what the manual labels as the AC Generator correct?

As a side note, is there a way to change the post title to this thread? My ignorant first assumptions about what was wrong will make this thread either impossible to find for people having my problems or misleading to people actually having problems with their turn signal relay.

[Lechy]

No worries. The stator is part of the AC generator, it's the part with the coils, the rotor part contains magnets which induces a field current in the coils.
No, you can't change the title, better to start a new thread.
Good luck with the bike.

[emoji41]

[rocksandhammers]

Alright. So a follow up. Finally got down to the garage and started testing the regulator/rectifier per Lecheys video. Sure enough while testing the diodes the B/W-B/R diode read 0.83 V and tolerances are 0.4-0.7. Found a new one on eBay for $40 (including expedited shipping). Should be here Wednesday so hopefully I’m riding again this time next week. I’ll post an update when it’s installed.