Gents:

When I went to take my car for the first drive last week, my battery was dead. I tried to jump the motor off a car, but as soon as I removed the jumper cables, the engine died. In the end, I had to borrow my friend's big American V twin batter for the drive. When he got the battery home, it too was dead.

My recitfier gets warm, so I assume current gets there...My gues is that it is somehow not returning to the battery. I use a Westfield loom on the engine and I'm 99% certain everything is wired correctly.

On bike engines, does the charging system only 'kick in' after a certain RPM (3k RPMs and higher)? If so, that may explain it because I didn't spin the engine much higher than 2.5k RPMs.

--Any help is appreciated, Chris

Have you checked the voltage on the battery whilst the motors running? Does it reach around 13 to 15 volts and then not rise above that?

Could be a dead regulator and supplying quite a bit more voltage than is required and demolishing batteries... ?

Chris.

Remember once the engine is started a good battery will keep it running for a while with no charging.

Best thing to do is start up and test beattery voltage should be around 13 to 14 volts if not the charge system is not working.

Also check earths all over they are the route of many problems.

[Edited on 17/3/06 by rusty]

I drove from London to Plymouth in an old Escort in the daytime with non charging battery so in your case it's not just not charging. There is something more going on.

Electric fuel pump will help kill a battery faster +ECU and injectors if you have them.

An engine with mach fuel pump and carbs will run for an age on a good battery.

I had a similar issue with my car when I first fired it up and also took out a battery, it turned out to be a dead reg. You need to look at the voltage across the battery and also what comes out of the reg. I was getting about 14V at idle so I thought it was in good health but when I started to rev the voltage was going up considerably get up to 18+++V.

I'll put money on it being the regulator, is it a standard one?

Why not fit a Honda superdream one as many do if it needs replacing, much cheaper and actually last!

HTH,
Rich.

Many thanks for the suggestions gents. I'll borrow the stuff from work and check the currents.

If it is a bad rectifier, perhaps I should just go with the Superdream. Shortie: what year/model should I look for? Do you happen to know the US name for the Superdream?

--Thanks, Chris

[Edited on 18/3/06 by chrisf]