when your done laughing

neighbor guy wanted to see my bike. long story short, I only got my 2006 FZ6 out of storage a week ago. Put the battery in (3 years old & on a tender this winter) started it up, rode 7 miles after prep/lube,etc., parked in garage. started up 2 days ago for about 5 minutes. everything great/normal.

So..the guy comes over and the ignition seems a little stickey in hindsite, but I turn to "on" and I get nothing...not even a tick/sound or lights as the guages normally cycle on. nothing when press the starter, nothing at all. Not a flicker of light on the gauges, not a spark. No kill switch in wrong position. Key was in off position. thinking something in the ignition itself so I messed with that for a bit. YUUP, bit of an ididot here and could not recall if the ignition /key turned past the "on" position to the right, but it will not, if it ever did/does??? (grasping here for something never paid attention to) Thinking I somehow blew an ignition fuse and or the battery run down somehow. (actually first thought, but did not wanted to do everthing else before the hazzle of getting to the fuses and battery-and have never had a problem to hint at the battery running down)

No fuse problem. Put tender on (all I have for a charger for the MC) and I get a faded "clock time" on the gauge. So, battery is stone dead. Still waiting(of course) for it to hopefully charge enought to turn over. (about 4 hours now)

so, What caused it to discharge so completely like that with never a hint, etc of a problem. This bike has been flawless prior. I have no additional electrical draws. My neighbor questioned the ignition switch and the little black arrow notch to the right of "on"...and darn if i ever noticed as nothing ever went wrong before. Feeling a bit of idiot on the ignition thing.:spank: So what wehat about the ignition switch...can anyone provide some further troubleshooting on missing the obvious- moment I'm having.

First thing I would do is check electrical connections and if they're good pull the battery and have it load tested at a local auto parts store.

If your model is the same as ours down here in Oz, when you turned the key to "Lock", did you maybe go one click further and turn on the "parking" lights??

On mine, you can turn the key past the lock position and the little parking lights come on... I believe they did that so if you have to leave your bike somewhere in the middle of the night down a dark road, then the bike can be seen by oncoming vehicles.

That will drain every ounce of life from your battery.

:rockon:

Yep- I have done that and the parking lights arent that bright in daylight to notice but to be honest at three years old the battery is getting on a bit even with a conditioner on all the time

Yepbeen there, done that.....but only once to the same degree, what a hassle, hope thats all it is
'scuse the spileng....fat fingers!!

If you store a battery for an extended period with a low charge, it can die. I did that once. Jumping or clutch-starting the bike, riding it for a few hours to charge, hopefully with no stoplights, followed by battery tender treatment overnight MIGHT return it to serviceability, but with a three year old battery I wouldn't bother unless funds are tight.

He had the battery on a tender this winter.
US Yamahas don't have a park position/detent position on the ignition switch. US Suzukis do though! Don't know about Kawasaki and Honda...

Check connection's, charge, and load test.

If the battery is 3 years old and had a few winters with poor maintenance it could be done.

You can get a battery out of the box and it's not good. Rare but it does happen and no matter how much you scratch your head and think how new it is will replace testing it to show it's ability for depth of charge.

If the battery passes the test it's time to look for a drain on the battery.
A bad regulator/rectifier
A bad stator.

Motogiro said:

He had the battery on a tender this winter.
US Yamahas don't have a park position/detent position on the ignition switch. US Suzukis do though! Don't know about Kawasaki and Honda...

Check connection's, charge, and load test.

If the battery is 3 years old and had a few winters with poor maintenance it could be done.

You can get a battery out of the box and it's not good. Rare but it does happen and no matter how much you scratch your head and think how new it is will replace testing it to show it's ability for depth of charge.

If the battery passes the test it's time to look for a drain on the battery.
A bad regulator/rectifier
A bad stator.

Click to expand...

Cheap tenders can do more harm than good. I just parked mine for 4 months and put the battery inside where its warm. It was 12.99v when I pulled it and 12.91 volts when I put it back. No charging, no tending, no load. Bike fired right up.

Wiki >> Lead
Read about sulfation a ways down. THat's what cheap tenders will do. PS bike is an 08.

FinalImpact said:

Cheap tenders can do more harm than good. I just parked mine for 4 months and put the battery inside where its warm. It was 12.99v when I pulled it and 12.91 volts when I put it back. No charging, no tending, no load. Bike fired right up.

Wiki >> Lead
Read about sulfation a ways down. THat's what cheap tenders will do. PS bike is an 08.

Click to expand...

or just old tenders. ours dried the cells on a couple of dirtbike batteries, and it was high end, well 10 years ago it was.

Most decent tenders today are pulse type chargers. They don't charge all the time. They look at the battery voltage and don't charge until there is a specific lower voltage. Then they charge the battery and go to stand by where it returns to periodically looking at the battery voltage.

Another common failure to batteries in colder weather is freezing. As the specific gravity of the electrolyte drops the battery can freeze. So a battery not kept charge and left in cold environments can freeze. This can damage internal plate as well as burst and damage the case. A fully charged lead acid battery is good for like -75 deg F. A dead battery can freeze at +28-30 deg.F

FinalImpact said:

Cheap tenders can do more harm than good. I just parked mine for 4 months and put the battery inside where its warm. It was 12.99v when I pulled it and 12.91 volts when I put it back. No charging, no tending, no load. Bike fired right up.

Wiki >> Lead
Read about sulfation a ways down. THat's what cheap tenders will do. PS bike is an 08.

Click to expand...

+1
Forget standard tenders. Get yourself a Tecmate Optimate 4, or whatever the current version is. I have that model, for my car(weekend racer type of deal), and not only did it bring back a battery that I thought was toast, it's kept it going for over a year! The charger/maintainer tests the battery every so often, and acts accordingly, whether it needs a fast charge, a slow charge, or pulse charge if the battery is sulfated. If you hunt around, or wait for a sale, the Optimate's can be had for around $50-60. Totally worth it for stored batteries.