Video* Silly Electrical problems! VFR700F2 Dead battery, Bad stator?

Alright, anyone have any ideas?
I'm going to follow the procedures on the all things Stator related thread but I would love some input from others as well!

My 87 VFR700F2 was running just fine, 2 weeks of riding everyday (50 miles a day).... I did notice last wednesday night (1st time riding this in the dark) that the headlamp would go dim and then bright, however it was not RPM related.... everything was fine otherwise, until Sunday.

Got off the freeway and I noticed that my Tach was bouncing for no reason, my Neutral indicator light on the dash was very very dim, then I noticed the issue with the turn signals.... then I realized I had to keep the RPM's high enough to keep it from dying!

Here is a video of what I am dealing with!

[video]https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1o-iKlLYjJsZ0R5YmV4dHF5TTA&authuser=0[/video]
Once I turned the key off the bike lost all power obviously it looses power when you shut it off, but I mean no dash lights or anything.

So I pulled the battery this morning, it had zero fluid in all of the cells, and the ground wire just slid out of the terminal connector.

then...

I did what I do with my old (and this battery isn't very old but its older 1-2 yrs.) snowmobile batteries.
1. Filled up each cell with some distilled water
2. Put it on a 1 amp charger, which it is still charging on as I type this

As of now I have no conclusions as to what the issue is, I assume a bad ground and an old battery are to blame and possibly more!
I hope it is not the Stator, but I will find out!

So I think I have some if not all of the following issues;
1. Need a new battery
-Install a battery tender to keep it charged
2. Need new ground wiring/connectors
3. Need a new Stator to replace Bad stator or the Recitor (I think that is the name of it)

I'm New to bikes all together, but I do have a decent amount of electrical & mechanical experience.

Thanks for the advice!!

 

And you are only the second one today with charging problems, must be at least 10million VFR's that have had this problem, welcome to the world of the dud connectors

 

Well I took the battery off the charger so it had about 8 1/2 hours of solid charge time. Some water that I put into the battery overflowed onto the wooden stand. I cleaned it up with a paper towel and latex gloves.
Popped it back in my bike
I used a Heavy duty car audio terminal connector for the ground
re-attached the battery and KABOOOM! She keeps on running.


I probably have other issues with the bike but thats all apart of owning toys!


Who suggests a new battery?

 

Well that is wonderful news you have proved your battery charger is working and that your starter motor works. Now before you get stuck on the road do the" Drill" , and get rid of that stinking useless bloody connector between the stator and rec/reg, but by the sound of it it will will probably have taken out the charging system with it

 

Your earlier post suggests that the battery electrolyte had pretty much all boiled off and presumably some or all of the plates were exposed - which is definitely not good for battery longevity. If your extended recharging process manages to get the VFR running OK with the current battery, there is no reason why you should not use it for now, but don't expect it to last.

You don't say how old the current battery is? If it is already 3 or more years old, then it is living on borrowed time. If you are not sure how old it is - the web has plenty of great resources on motorbike battery issues - such as this one http://www.whitedogbatteries.com/

Modern motorbike batteries are quite resilient given the demands made on them and the sometimes harsh environment they operate in. Indeed some can be brought back from the grave (for a while) by using a modern digital battery optimiser. Inevitably occasional manufacturing defects still means that a tiny fraction of brand new batteries will fail in the first few days of use, but most should last two years heavy use, if you are lucky you might get five. Weird thing is that most batteries tend to fail very slowly after a few years daily use - and if you are listening to your bike, you can often hear when the starter does not sound quite right - sort of struggling to get the bike running. At the very least that should alert you to check and possibly recharge the battery. If funds are not tight, then that should be your cue to track down a replacement - if you believe in "replace before fail", rather than "replace after failure" (which Murphy's law indicates will happen when you are riding on your own, after dark, in the rain, miles from anywhere, and when your cell phone battery is also dead or has no signal!)

Which brings me to the key question "why the electrolyte boiled off?"

OK there is a tiny risk it is down to a cracked casing - so please check just in case the electrolyte has escaped and is now busy eating its way through your VFR. More likely acute loss of battery electrolyte is down to excess charging current - which points to the RR! So for now I would be actively monitoring the charging system. You can get cheap LED battery volt monitors on ebay for a few bucks. They are rarely super accurate so don't get stressed by the specific voltage number - just verify it with a decent multimeter, and then look for the displayed voltage to remain pretty stable during normal running. If the voltage rises or falls dramatically from the baseline number you calibrated against a multi-meter, then you know you still have charging system problems. If nothing else, it is worth testing the battery volts once a week with a multi-meter across the battery terminals first with the engine stopped and again after it has fired up to see you are getting acceptable volts. Ideally repeat this check straight after a long run, by which time everything electrical will have warmed up and intermittent faults may reveal themselves. A stator may check out perfectly fine when cold but insulation on the windings may fail when it gets really hot and instead of charging your bike it may end up draining your battery.

Take care



Skimad

 

Yes, as above, your stator is good if it's putting out enough power to boil out your battery electrolite. Problem is most likely a bad regulator/rectifier. Anytime there are charging problems, most on here know that two connector plugs need inspection: one with three yellow wires between stator and r/r and the red plug on the starter relay. :sorrow:

 

Hi, just wondering how you got on with this fault, I had exactly the same thing happen to me today, I've had the bike about a week and everything has run just fine so I've have had no cause to tinker with anything or start finding my way around the bike, just been enjoying the ride (it was MoT'd the day I picked it up so I wasn't really expecting much in the way of problems) The slight difference I experienced or noticed was that when I removed the seat to inspect what was going on the rectifier seemed to be really hot (it has been a hot day today) I was stuck on the side of the road and had to stop because of the same symptom were the red fuel light came on and the tacho needle was bouncing all over the place and started to run poorly as though it was going on reserve, (the battery was red hot and bone dry) I topped up the battery with water and by then everything had cooled down, I turned the ignition on and everything came back to life, the bike started straight away, I couldn't believe it still had charge enough to start the engine, I rode it home about 25 miles with no problem, obviously I need to investigate what happened so I will check out all these connections mentioned etc, a guy at the side of the road said that rectifiers were a known problem on the vfr, seems to me that the location is not great for cooling??

 

Just do the Drill, simple as that, the fact your battery boiled dry indicates the R/R is probably putting 18 volts into the battery

 

Out of interest what would happen with the stator if the vehicle was run without the reg/rect connected, I'm guessing the stator still produces electricity which would dissipate through heat just like the reg/rec dissipates the excess through heat, so the question is would it then burn out the stator over heat the engine etc, obviously I know the battery is not going to charge, but if you had to ride the vehicle because you were stuck somewhere there was no phone signal to get recovered.