Well I had something interesting happen today. I changed the headlight on my 96 K1100RS to an LED a couple of months ago and thought I would also add the headlight relays that everyone's been talking about. So ordered the setup from Beaver Electric and just today got it hooked up.
When I finished the install, I turned the ignition on... headlight turned on nice and bright... neutral light lit up nice and bright... I hit the ignition... the engine reluctantly turned over once and stopped. I let up off the starter button, now the green neutral light was not lit, lights were off, and ignition did nothing when I hit the start button.
I putzed around with the battery a bit to see if I inadvertently left something disconnected or shorted something. All looked good. Tried to jump start it but that didn't do anything... still no neutral light or headlights. All fuses looked good. Put a voltmeter to the battery and it was barely putting out any voltage... like 0.004V. It was still on the trickle charger but it was blinking red, indicating the battery was not connected properly. What!?
Ultimately pulled the battery thinking maybe I shorted it when I was putting the battery holder in place and I killed it. Was preparing to go buy a new one but thought I'd check voltage again now that it was all disconnected. Voltage was now a little over 3 volts! Hooked the trickle charger to it and it indicated proper connection and started charging the battery... I could see the voltage slowly but steadily increasing. So now I'm' wondering what the heck happened.
I'm still thinking I may have accidentally shorted the battery when installing the battery hold down bracket because the plastic cover that sits over the positive terminal was just sitting ontop of the terminal and may have slide out of position. But if I did, seems it would still be bad once I disconnected everything. Plus the ignition did turn on and headlights turned on and it even turned the engine over, albeit barely. Behaved like a weak battery.
The only thing I added was the headlight relay wiring so perhaps that's bad... but it's fused so if there was something wrong with it, it would have blown the fuse to protect the battery. Plus the headlight turned on fine initially but it's almost like it sucked all the juice out of the battery before it had a chance to start. If that's the case, it seems it would still have allowed the trickle charger to charge the battery back up but it was indicating a bad connection and didn't start charging until it was completed disconnected from the bike.
My plan is to reconnect the battery once it has a full charge, minus the head light relays, and see if she'll fire up. I totally expect her to. If she does, I'll disconnect the headlight and reconnect the relay wiring to the battery. See what happens. If all still good, I'll reconnect the headlight.
Any theories and what may have happened?
Thanks!