| Help! My bike's dead!
I got kitted-up bright and early this morning to leave for Riders at 9am but in the end I couldn't leave home because of an electrical problem with the bike.
It is due to go in for its annual service in the next fortnight so Rich & Dean at Louigi Moto will fix it for me I'm sure but I would like to know what has gone wrong! I have no idea about electrics so any thoughts from those who do would be welcome.
The bike is a 996SPS which are notoriously hard on the electrics because of the extra high-compression engine which requires a lot of battery power to turn over. The battery alwas seemed laboured when I first got the bike about a year ago so I replaced it with a heavy duty Odyssey PC680. This fixed it a treat - the bike turned-over and started easily every time - even though it is only used once every week or two.
However, over the last few weeks it has been more and more difficult to start the bike - the battery seemed to be running down despite the bike living on a Optimate whenever it is in the garage. I have a Datatool Veto alarm on the bike and leave it armed.
Anyways this morning the indicator light on the Optimate was green showing that the state of the battery was A-OK. However, when I tried I could barely turn the engine over at all and it wouldn't start. When I took off the side panel to jump-start the bike from my car I noticed that the battery terminal connectors had been getting really hot and melting the plastic on the top of the battery!
I jump started the bike fine, but when I disconnected the jump leads the engine stopped running. Now the bike is totally 'dead' - the starter button doesn't do anything. I can jump start it, but as soon as I disconnect the jump leads it dies again.
I reconnected the Optimate and seven hours later it is still showing an orange light which according to the Optimate manual means that the battery is 'badly discharged'.
Does anyone have any idea what the problem is?  |