Please post what you both find if you make progress...
The bike ran for a while after the deer crash. The bike was still in Florida then, and it's been in Louisiana for years since then. I rode it for at least a year with no problems before leaving it here for that extended period of time.
I don't think it's the ToS but I will check just in case.
I'm trying to sort of deduce what could have gone wrong in the process. If we look at it sort of as a step by step...
1. Bike is totally dead. Battery will not charge. I buy a new battery, make sure it's charged to full, and install it. I also remove the top of the airbox to inspect the filter and box itself; a bit of stuff in there on the pre-filter side (front end). I clear it out and clean the filter.
2. Bike attempts to start, fuel light not flashing (but low tank indicator flashing, and I did have a low tank). Won't start but attempts to.
3. I take off the tank and inspect it - lots of rust inside. I clean it out as best as I can. I also remove the fuel pump, take it apart, clean every inch of it.
4. I re-install the fuel pump into the tank, put the tank back on the bike.
5. I put a fresh gallon of gas into the tank - just regular, not premium.
6. When attempting to start the bike, the gas gauge is now flashing and the pump will not prime at all, and the starter does nothing.
7. A half hour later, the pump is now randomly priming on every keyturn. I know the killswitch is functioning because if I turn the key with it set to OFF, the pump will not prime until I set it to ON.
So based on that and what I did, and considering the starter ATTEMPTED to start the bike near step 2 and has stopped doing so around step 5, I didn't really mess with anything anywhere other than the battery compartment or under/in the tank. It's got to be something there, right?
While it's possible that something else randomly began to fail during the time I had the tank off, it's most likely something happened during that process, right? Now if the connections under the tank weren't connected properly, would the pump still be priming? Out of all of the things I've read related to the fuel gauge flashing I don't recall any of them preventing the bike from turning over at all - maybe it wouldn't start, but it always TRIED to start. I'm at a loss. And I'm losing daylight >.<