Catastrophic Short [Solved, it was a dead battery]

[Guest]

Yesterday afternoon I had just rode home from work and wanted to trailer my wing for a ride to TN where I have some help for the alternator conversion. While driving the bike up on the trailer (tilt-bed) it suddenly died and I heard a whirring sound for a second like you might hear from an electric motor spinning, possibly the starter.

I let the wing back down of the trailer and did a few quick checks. Any time I'd turn the key to the run position the battery voltage would drop to 0. I knew right away I had a short and shut it back off. Oddly enough the 30 amp fuse isn't blowing so now I'm worried about that as well.

My wife and I pushed 'er up on the trailer, sorta, and here I am trying to figure out what went wrong.

With everything hooked up and the key at run I have 0 ohms across +/- at battery (batt is disconnected). I've pulled the fuses one at at time. Pulling ALL the fuses gives me nothing better than 100 omhs. As I replaced the fuses, whenever the meter dropped back to 0 I'd leave that fuse out. I'm left right now with three fuses out, Tail, Meter, and Radio/Flasher. Pulling the MAIN breaker seems to make no difference with all the other fuses connected as well. I'm using 650 ohms, for now, as my baseline for what I need to get unplugged and get the meter back up to, which is what I see with the ignition off.

I've also disconnected the main + to the starter which made no change in the resistance. I've also been working my way around other connectors with no luck so far.

I guess my next thing to do is disconnect the fuse box altogether at those three big connectors and measure each incoming wire, note the color and resistance, then find in the schematics what they go to if they are shorted.

If any of you have run across something similar I'd like to hear about it.
Any chance the ignition switch is shorted out?

Thanks and I hope you guys have a better weekend than me

Take care!

[Guest]

Tempted to delete my post in embarrassment and such, but this is probably still good info.

Despite the meter showing "0" ohms across the +/- battery terminals with the ignition on this is not a bad thing, apparently.

For giggles we brought over a used car battery which was fully charged to see what it did when it was hooked up. It did NOT drop to very low voltage with the key on. The wing also starts mighty fine with that battery.

Dead batteries are a *&^%$#@.

Now back to the alternator job.

[Guest]

Gee...that's never happened to me! :- :roll:

[scty_p]

I had been hitting the starter button.....

:lol: :lol: #-O Holy Crap! That's funny! Thanks for sharing that one!

[admin]

I went to honk the big air horns at a 1200 as I left the gas station parking lot.....no horn and the CD player reset. Got home and opened up the fuse box...wiggled this and that...opened up the right lower where the relay is....turned the bike on and hit the horn....the bike STARTED!!!
I had been hitting the starter button..... :roll:

Now tell me Bob, did your bike make a loud noise when you tried to start your bike with the horn button? :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

[Ed Z]

Good thing you were already on your way home then.!!! :lol: :lol: