Hey guys I'm pretty new here and to the motorcycle world. I'm not a mechanical expert and I've been having a little trouble with my 07 GS500F. It had been running fine until one day I got caught in some hard rain and I noticed that my dash lights started to flicker a little. Foolish me thought no big deal, took it home, covered it and that was that. Over the next couple of days I would turn the key on to ignition and the dash light would not light up at all sometimes and when I go to start it then engine wouldn't even turn. But after a couple of tries it would start, but while riding the tachometer would do a crazy dance from 0 to 8k rpm and then would stay at zero sometimes.. But today I go to start up the bike and nothing, absolutely nothing. I know I probably compounded the problem by not fixing it earlier, but could this be a battery problem or is it an electrical problem? I'm pretty young (16) and really don't know anything about using a voltmeter to test fuses and whatnot. Any advice would be great, thanks

Get the battery charged up, then go through the charging system check procedure in the FAQ.

if your current problem is a electrically bead bike..then get the battery charged up and let us know the following. do you have anylights when you turn the ignition switch on? as you stated the starter will not crank, correct?
when you get the battery charged and the bike is still dead,start by checking the main fuse. if good, it almost sounds like a bit of water got sucked up into a connection for the instrument cluster or ignition switch.
if the bike has power with a charged battery, aka light etc. as stated in the previous post, go thru the charging system checks.

i started to add to my reply by trying to explain electrical theory so you would be comfortable using a multi meter. 3 lines in i confused my self and realized i understood it better than i could explain it simply. read this link and hope it helps


http://www.autoshop101.com/forms/elec11.pdf