Battery draw

ZbornacSVT

Registered
I currently have an electrical issue that is driving me insane!

Bike runs fine, starts fine, everything fine....until it sits for any period of time. I'll come back to the bike as little as a day or two after riding it and battery will be 0.00V. Absolutely dead. If I leave it plugged in to a battery tender it is fine, but that is simply masking my issue. I have been unable to find the draw as it seems to be intermittent. I can never find anything when I run tests.

My personal opinion is it has something to do with my fan relay. I replaced the relay last year when I was having issues with my fan not kicking on. I believe my drain issues started shortly after that. Is there a way to test if the relay is sticking open? Would that be enough to kill my battery in short order? Is there a common list of items to check so I'm not chasing this little gremlin until the end of time?

I thought I had it fixed, and had bought a new battery (Shorai) and put it in last week. Tested the battery every day for a week and saw no drop whatsoever. Left town for a few days on vacation and got back today. Voltage reads 0 again!! wtf?!?!? I didn't even ride the bike once with the new battery! Is the Shorai a $150 brick now or can I revive it?

Help!!
 
Mine does the same thing thinking about disconnecting my speedo healer and see try to disconnect my power commander or the HID I keep on popping fuse for the fan it suck when you ride then come to traffic and then find out you pop a fan fuse and just watch it over heat.
 
How are you troubleshooting? This is a very easy..

Connect a test light in between the positive battery post and positive cable terminal.

The light should be out if you have no battery draw..
If the test light bulb is lit start removing fuses, once you found what circuit its on start disconnecting devices one by one till the light goes out....and thats what is pulling your battery down.
 
+1
I had the same issue, battery was drawing about 10.5mA when I connected the neg terminal to the multimeter / ground. But my battery would not drain if kept overnight, it would just be a sluggish start.
Started removing fuses one by one and found that the fuel pump fuse was the culprit. As I pulled the fuse off, the voltage dropped to 0.4mA, service manual says it should be <0.3mA draw!

Now the question is...is it the fuel pump relay or the tip over sensor?

Sorry, didn't mean to take over your thread, but I think we may experience the same electrical gremlins.
 
What accessories do you have hooked up to bike?
You need to use an Ohm meter and see which one has a static draw.
Do you have a USB charger? If so that's it. Mine drew enough to kill a new Shorai in three or four days.
Numerous other accessories will do this as well. Find which one it is and isolate it with a switch you can turn off and on.
 
+1
I had the same issue, battery was drawing about 10.5mA when I connected the neg terminal to the multimeter / ground. But my battery would not drain if kept overnight, it would just be a sluggish start.
Started removing fuses one by one and found that the fuel pump fuse was the culprit. As I pulled the fuse off, the voltage dropped to 0.4mA, service manual says it should be <0.3mA draw!

Now the question is...is it the fuel pump relay or the tip over sensor?

Sorry, didn't mean to take over your thread, but I think we may experience the same electrical gremlins.

Download the free service manual. The electrical troubleshooting is easy. This post best describes the drain test. It's a simple matter os isolating the problem. Obviously if you just added something and this problem started, I would start there.
 
ok, I checked the voltage draw and it's 0.7mA (wrong setting on the multimeter, lol). Has anyone lately checked to see if they have had any drain? and what does it show? I'm guessing a 0.7mA is not significant, however it's good to probe. Bike is complete stock, no accessories, extra connections etc.
 
I think .4 ma , I'm sure there's a range. It's in the manual. I can't get to mine. Hopefully someone will post up.

You could also ride up to the local parts place and have them load test the battery and insure that it's good. Had a two year old battery in a car once that would die if it sat 3 days. Tried everything thinking the battery was good. Took it to auto sure and it tested bad. Replaced battery 6 months ago and haven't had a problem since.
 
The manul says that it should be <0.3mA which I think supports the clock and other trip settings.

I just installed a brand new battey, all reading are perfect, voltage is good, the problem is when the fuel pump fuse is removed, the readings go down to 0.0!
Question is...does the fuel pump draw 0.7mA when off? I wouldn't think it should.
 
You need to start checking that circuit. Put the fuse in, pull the fuel pump relay and see what happens. I don't have the schematics so my comments are very limited.
 
Alright....finally was able to charge up a battery and start some additional testing. Interesting results to say the least.....

Per the service manual's instruction, I tested on the (-) side of the battery. DMM set appropriately. All accesories left attached to the positive terminal of battery and I used the battery'd bolt/nut to secure all the negative connections together apart from the battery.

Accessories consist of:
Scorpio alarm attached to the (+) side of battery
Gear indicator attached to the (+) side of battery
Battery Tender pigtail attached to both (+) and (-)
PCIII USB attached to the (-) side of battery

As soon as I made the connection with my DMM, my alarm blipped like normal, but what wasn't normal was my fans immediately kicked on (and now stays on if battery connected)....I then pulled the DMM leads and reset the readout for a higher resolution and reattempted. Now nothing....I think I may have fried my DMM? Is there a way to check?
 
popped the fuse in my DMM.....looks like I get to check out my refound fan issue before I can fix my battery issue.

Perhaps my fan is my phantom battery issue? If my fan were to kick on in the garage when I'm not around, how long would it take to kill the battery? This might explain why I've never been able to find the draw before.....

I had the same fan issue last year, but thought I'd fixed it by replacing my relay. Perhaps not....maybe the relay is a symptom and not the cause.

Thoughts?
 
I don't have schematics, but I'm doubting Suzuki would allow the cooling fan to kill the battery. Have you modified the fan circuit ?
 
I added a second fan a couple years ago and simply bumped the fuse to a 15A from the stock 10A, which was standard practice at the time.

I did get some more fuses and played around some more. Had to disconnect the alarm for testing because the "thanks for giving me power" blips were spiking the load enough to pop my fuse.....

Knowing the fans are an issue, all of these tests were ran w/ the fan fuse pulled.
With the alarm lead removed I was seeing a 4.4mA draw after the system settled down from initial connection. Pulling the rest of the 7 or so fuses under the cowling, the only one that effected the reading was the 'fuel' fuse. That dropped the reading down to 3.5mA, which is still over the 3mA threshold from the factory.

I am about the rip my entire fan setup out and return to factory setup....Every problem I've had the last 3 years seams to go back to that second fan....

I'm taking the family to a movie, so I'll read up when I get back.
Thanks for the help.
 
you could just unplug the second fan, it electrically it would be stock.
I kinda doubt that is it, but now I'm curious, what else did you trace back to it?
 
Best of luck. If you pull the second fan electrically and ride for months without issue then you might have to rethink the power for the second fan.
 
small ma aren't going to drain a battery in a day or 2.........10 or 12ah fresh battery can withstand a 1A draw ( parking light ) for 10 hrs before dropping below 11V at which point the electronics have issues powering up....so even 10ma ( 0.01A ) should not be a problem for at least week.

A stock bike in good condition shouldn't have any real draw when off....faults with weathering on the ignition barrel or bar headlight switch ( if there ) or any of the main multiplugs could cause all sorts of problems.
My mate had a K3 Gsxr600 with a corroded main multiplug and all sorts of things began playing up.

One other area to check is the running voltage at idle and again at 3000+ revs...make sure it never goes over 14.7v as it will damage the battery by boiling it dry.....yes it will charge up from a charger but won't hold charge for long.
 
you could just unplug the second fan, it electrically it would be stock.
I kinda doubt that is it, but now I'm curious, what else did you trace back to it?

History of fan related issues:
Issue #1 - https://www.hayabusa.org/forum/busa-problems/153023-fan-issues.html#post2722416
Issue #2 - https://www.hayabusa.org/forum/busa-problems/167054-help-my-fans-will-not-turn-off.html

These are the ONLY issues I've ever had with the bike.

One other area to check is the running voltage at idle and again at 3000+ revs...make sure it never goes over 14.7v as it will damage the battery by boiling it dry.....yes it will charge up from a charger but won't hold charge for long.

I checked it at 5,000rpm yesterday as the manual suggested and it was 14.5V. I seriously doubt this is my issue as the Shorai that I lost never even got to turn the bike on. It never saw my bike running....

The odd thing about the fan issue....the fans were operating 100% normal to the best of my knowledge until I went to test the current draw on the bike. How would that issue occur then? How does the fan continue to run even if I pull the relay???!?
 
I'm looking at the schematics now, and this is my understanding; when you connect the battery, the fans come on. Removing the Fan relay does not cause them to turn off. Is this correct?

--Sky
 
Back
Top