Electrically Fried?

[Suggy]

Hey wise GS-twinners,

I was starting my GS500E this morning all of a sudden it just stopped cranking and lost ignition lights and all signs of life. Brand new battery just put in.

I popped the seat and found a short between the +ve terminal and a sizzled earth wire (additionally added for some dumb accessory that a previous owner installed and I removed).

The insulation tape that had been used had worn through and allowed contact.

I've replaced the wiring but she still won't light up at all, battery seems fine on the charger. The fuse is also not blown.

I'm an absolute newcomer to electrical systems but based on the workshop manual I'm thinking regulator/rectifier has died, sound about right? Better be because I just ordered a replacement.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[mr72]

Probably not the regulator rectifier. Bike should start and run on battery even with no reg/rect installed.

You can take the battery terminals off and measure resistance between the positive and negative battery cables (not the battery) with the switches etc all on and if it's infinity then you have an open circuit somewhere, if it's some single digits number of ohms then the battery is dead.

Or just measure the battery voltage directly with the bike off. Should be 12.8 volts or more if fully charged. If it's down near 12.0 then it won't deliver enough current to turn in the lights.

A hard short like that should have taken out the main fuse as long as that wire was downstream of the fuse. If it wasn't downstream of the fuse then it'd drain the battery basically immediately and with any luck not damage it but you could have internally shorted the battery so not all cells charge.

As usual this may be as simple as a bad fuse or shorted battery or it might require a wire by wire sifting of the entire electrical system to find it.

[Suggy]

Thanks mr72, that's a great response. I'll go back to it with all that in mind.

I hope I didn't kill the battery, it was brand new and a high quality one at that.

[Bluesmudge]

Also make sure you are checking the actual fuse and not the spare fuse! You wouldn't be the first to make that mistake

[Kiwingenuity]

The pixies always take the path of least resistance, hopefully you haven't blown a hole in the plates in the battery.. a high quality battery can usually take a hit, but the flipside is the higher the CCA the more likely the excessive current internally destroys the battery.

+1 to Bluesmudge - check to make sure you found the *actual* fuse..

Otherwise..

If you have the battery out on its own, does it provide any power to a 12V load for a decent length of time?  Sometimes you can measure a voltage at the battery with a high impedence meter (digitals especially), only to have it fall flat when you actually put some load onto it.

Do you have a car battery + jumpers you could perhaps wrangle up temporarily to see if the electrics light up?