dead battery?

[fw189uhu]

Has anybody tried to sculpt their seat to better fit their body/riding style? I have a KLR factory seat with the Kawa gel pad upgrade. After attending the CornerSpin school in North Carolina (an EXCELLENT experience; I'm a much better/safer rider now), I've noticed the Kawa seat is too wide at the front end for my body shape. Should mention that CornerSpin teaches riding far forward on the seat for maximum control in cornering. Don't want to start a flame war about riding styles, best schools, etc., as my question is specific on how to sculpt the seat for a narrower top edge at the front. In the old days we used an electric turkey carving knife to trim away the foam we didn't want. Will this process work with a gel seat pad? Thanks much. Dave

[Jeff Khoury]

You need to half-step the problem; that is - is the battery draining or is it failing to charge? 1. Disconnect ALL aftermarket items and verify all grounding connections are solid. 2. Charge the battery 3. Let the battery "rest" out of the bike for a few minutes and measure the voltage across the poles, unloaded. 4. Install the battery 5. Come back in an hour and check the voltage again. Is it approximately the same? 6. Add any aftermarket stuff back in, wait another hour and measure again. If everything is good to this point, next we check the charging system. 7. Start the bike and measure across the battery. You should read 13.8 V nominally; in practice you'll see 13.4 - 14.1v. If you don't see it you have a problem with either a.) stator or b.) Reg/rec. To test the stator: Locate the stator wires coming out of the crankcase. Set your meter to AC volts. There will be three wires coming out of the stator. Measure across all combinations of these wires with the bike running, looking to see relatively the same voltage across each pair. Use the sharp leads and gently pierce the insulation to measure if you can't find a connector to measure from. Stators' output voltages vary, but if they're bad, you'll usually see a big difference in one of the readings. If all of this has checked out, replace the regulator/rectifier. There are ways to test them but if you've followed these steps you've eliminated everything else. -Jeff Khoury From: "klr6501999" To: "DSN KLR650" DSN_KLR650@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Saturday, June 4, 2011 8:02:39 AM Subject: [DSN_KLR650] Dead battery? Just put a new battery in my bike. Rode it a handfull of times and went out to start it after work......dead. Push started and rode home.....next morning dead. Any ideas? [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]