Battery wont keep a charge... and dont know why?

Not sure what the problem could be...

Was hoping for some ideas to look for. Just installed a new battery this morning and she's dead already. :cry:

 

Charge it up and test voltage. See if it going up to full charge before hooking it back up.

 

The initial battery I bought was not great. Then my girl layed my bike down and I had to replace my blinker (her dime). Replaced the blinker, and the only difference is my original was one wire, but the new one was 3 wires (power, ground, and something I dont know). I hooked the power to the one wire, ground is on the forks, and the other cable is just tucked away. Got a new battery and charged it for a full day, charger read fully charged, then installed it the next day. After the install of the new battery, instrument panel light were EXTREMELY brighter as well as the horn was irritatingly louder. Rode around for awhile, parked for a few hours and went to ride to the gym and battery was dead!?

I'm stumped.

 

Bobby how did you determine which wires to hook up on the new turn signal? If you went by the color of the wires on the new turn signal you might have it wired wrong.

 

+1 waldo, check out exactly which wire is going where, 3 wires on a turn signal is a new one on me, I've only ever seen 1 or 2...

 

I don't think the turn signal circuit has any power when the key is off. If the battery is not bad, there has to be something drawing power with the key off. The only way to know for sure is a process of elimination. Battey good then move on to the next thing. Amp meter betweeen the positive battery post and the cable to see if there is an amp draw. Then if so start pulling fuses and connectors until you find the source of the load on the battery. I bet if it is drawing power to look at the voltage regulator real close.

 

It was a process of elimination really. My girl had bought an aftermarket light originally that only had two, and worked but the fixture was too small to fit. Went back and this fit, was OEM? but had 3 wires (same 2 as before, but a 3rd one). I still tried each wire in the power position along with the other two as a ground until I found a placement that worked.

I will try that and come back to this post with my results... the game is afoot.

 

No clue what happened, but its working fine now...

i blame harley gremlins...

 

The blinker assembly with 3 wires is one that was intended to have a "running light" feature. The three wires are for the ground, running lamp (dim) filament and flasher (bright) filament; just like a brake light.

If properly installed and wired right (and with the correct bulb) it would be a running light that got brighter when it flashed (again, just like a taillight/brake light.)

To use it as a straight turn signal, you would use the ground and "bright" lead, and insulate off the "dim" lead.

 

Thats exactly what I did, thankfully the bulb from the original taillight was still good so I was able to put that in.