Hobicus Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 So at my house this week is a 95 Virgao 535. It belongs to one of the kids who used to be part of my sons' boy scout troop, he's now an Eagle Scout, and is off in basic training for the Army. Last year it had charging problems, and I diagnosed a bad regulator/rectifier. I had plenty of AC voltage coming from the stator, but the battery was pretty stuck at 12.5 volts regardless of RPM. So I ordered a new one (Ricks, I think) and put it in. It's pulling 13.7 volts at 5000 RPM, make sure the battery's fully charged, and take it back to him and it's good to go. I didn't replace the battery, because it was brand new a month or so ago. This was in September. So in October he decided to take it up to Minneapolis (about 4 hours North of Madison) to visit a friend, and the next day it won't start. I won't get into the cluster-fuck that became him and his friend trying to get it started, but he ended up calling his dad to come get him and the bike, and they brought it home and it sat over the winter. Occasionally they would try to get it to run, but for the most part it sat. His dad did say that they had to keep it on a charger all the time, even after the RR repair. I picked it up on Saturday, brought it home, took the battery and put it on a charger (it was at 16%, according to my charger) and when it hit about 70%, I dropped it in the bike just to see if it would fire up. The battery only had enough juice to get it to turn over a few times, but I did get a couple pops indicating that it WOULD run if I could crank it enough. I hooked up my trusty 70amp starter to it, and the bike started pretty quickly, and ran well. Ok.. so it was a dead battery. I assumed that considering the battery had been drained/charged quite a bit, that maybe it was weak, and ordered a new one from my local shop. In the mean time, I leave it on the charger the rest of the day. It took forever to get to 100%, and considering his dad said that they had to keep it on a charger all the time, I start to suspect that there's some voltage drain. Leaving it off of the charger for an hour or so, then putting it back on, the battery is down to 90%, and again takes forever to get to 100% So I pull the positive lead, take my multimeter, and run it from the battery to the main lead, and sure enough, even with the key off, it's pulling 12.5 volts. Since this bike doesn't have a clock, or anything that would be drawing power, I start checking various things to see what it could be. There's only so many places I really can look.. With the main power lead off of the starter solenoid disconneced (read: the wire that powers the bike, not the main power to the starter) there's no drain. So it's not the starter solenoid..... It's not in the ignition switch.. etc... I finally figured out that the power lead which should be sending power OUT of the regulator/rectifier is shorted to ground. There's resistance, but it certainly appears to be where the drain is coming from. I leave it disconnected, let it sit for an hour or so, and the battery is still at 100%. Before I order another RR for this thing..... I thought I'd ask: The power lead shouldn't pass a continuity test to ground, should it? The RR should be either bleeding excess power to ground, and sending out voltage to the system, so I could see how they'd normally be connected, although it shouldn't be draining the battery. Thoughts?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cbrxxquad Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 sounds like it has shorted to ground, to me, but I would check a known good one to be sure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hobicus Posted June 15, 2009 Author Share Posted June 15, 2009 sounds like it has shorted to ground, to me, but I would check a known good one to be sure. Yea... but I don't have a known good one just laying around. I ordered a replacment, and basically told them that I'll be testing it with my multimeter before I leave their place. If it's not right, I swear I just go with a R1 model and work out a wiring thing with BartonMD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Krypt Keeper Posted June 16, 2009 Share Posted June 16, 2009 Sorry not too much help with your problem. But sounds like a bad ground to me also. I got an 87' 535 Virago for my wife that I restored. Bought it with 1517 miles on the clock.. RR was good, 1 week later it was burned up (Put a few hundred miles on the bike) so bought a new one offline that was an updated model. They put them in a shitty place on the bikes to start with. I never had another problem with it the 2 yrs after that I had the bike.. Sold it to a dad of a use to be member here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cbrxxquad Posted June 16, 2009 Share Posted June 16, 2009 just checked continuity of the red and green wires on three regs and none were connected to the body of the reg. And some were bad. One was new. There is between the like colors, but that would make sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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