Topic: Charging System vs. Battery

[mkarcz]

Hey

So a couple weeks ago I was riding my bike and the lights seemed to be dim as I was riding home, and I pulled up to a stop light.  Then I found myself pushing my bike off the road.  It kick started the next morning and I got home.  Charged the battery and everything seems a million times better.  This is  a '75 550k.  I am trying to give it the love and affection that it hasn't gotten since the Carter administration.
Leading up to this complete power loss I was having some other electrical issues.  The turn signal was sticking on and not beeping.  I had replaced the relay when I got the bike, and it didn't change anything so I put that problem on the back burner.  The thing is with newly charge battery turn signals are happily working.
The electric starter had stopped working.  I was feeling that since the bike was giving me a world of other problems this was another thing to replace.  Battery charged electric starter works great (well except the button doesn't come all the way out all the time).

Bike has new plugs, I think the valves and timing both need to be adjusted but haven't gotten around to them yet.

Back to problem. 

Rectifier.  All wires went to 3.5 or infinity, both ways.  looked good.

Battery:   Don't have the tools to do a proper check, am going to try to take to shop to have done.  It is a sealed battery supposedly replace last summer before I bought bike.

Regulator:  At a loss as to how to check properly

Stator:  Used the Ohm meter R x 10k and connected to the yellow wires, all combinations.  The needle stayed on the far left in infinity.

Field coil:  Connected to the White and Green R x 10k  Ohm meter zeroed out.

Hope this makes sense to those who can help.  From what I gathered the Stator and Field Coils don't go out very often so to see the system shot, sucks and may mean other things.  Battery could also be shot, and hopefully that will solve problem. 

One last test I did.  I set the multimeter to dc 50 and connected it to the battery.  Fired up the bike and ran through the tac.  It started at 12 and moved to 14/14.5.

Hope you all can help make my bike happy.

mkarcz

[B. Alec]

Mark,
    I think it's your battery. Maybe it's not gotten the love it needs since the Carter administration either?  If you don't know how old it is or how good a shape it's in, I'd go ahead and get a new one and a trickle charger.  I also use the kickstart instead of the electric unless I have to to conserve battery and run pretty high RPM's when I'm riding around town to make sure the thing's getting recharged.  The thing is, if the battery is getting 14.5V at high RPM's, your charging system is probably working right, right?  It makes sense that you just had a low battery if it kicked over the next day but just wasn't starting with the electric...remember when my orange bike wouldn't start for awhile?  It was just the battery getting drained by the starter, which takes WAY more power than the kick. 

PS. Move back to St. Paul

[mkarcz]

Thanks, I think it is the battery, but could I get a second opinion please.  Also, more evidence that I think its the battery.  I went for a short ride yesterday and checed the voltage out of the battery and ran through the RPM's and it started around ten and moved up to twelve.   So I am fairly sure that makes it the battery.  But why would I have the coil and stator coming up dead also?
m

[eldar]

If the batter is going bad, you can charge it with a battery charger but your charging system will not. I had this happen with an old 1982 nissan. This can over time also wreck the charging system. If you test the system while the bike is running and the battery is hooked up, you can get the wrong readings.