My 98 Hawk sat for a couple weeks while I was under the weather, and when I tried to start it, the battery was completely dead (didn't even register a bump on a multimeter).

The battery is only a couple months old.

I recharged it and set about bolting it back in. Positive terminal first; then when I was attaching the negative, I got sparks. I left it on for about ten minutes and then decided that wasn't the smartest thing to do.

So, I went back out to the garage to take the battery back out, and I noticed that the right-side subframe (that supports the seat) had actually gotten very hot!

Obviously I have a short somewhere. Any suggestions on where to start looking first? I'm hoping it's a bad ground from the actual negative cable, but that might be wishful thinking.

 

I feel for you. I HATE electrical problems. Check both negative and positive cables from the battery to be sure the insulation on them is good.

 

So do I. I had an 82 Kawi GPz 750 with that kept blowing fuses. I did a lot of voltage drop testing, unwrapped a bunch of wiring harnesses, replaced and cleaned switches and connectors, etc. I finally got the problem fixed, but I never did precisely isolate which connectors, switch or whatever was the source of the problem.

Sigh.

 

I did the same with my old VX800 at one time. good luck with the multi-meter. Hope you find it quick.

 

Negative ground from battery is solid. Damn.

 

A bit more information; if this sounds familiar to anyone, lemme know what you found. Turns out that the green ground wire leading to the regulator / rectifier is getting hot within 30 seconds or so of connecting the battery. Bad R/R or something else?

 

A small spark from the battery terminals when connecting the cables is completely normal. I wouldn't give it a second thought!

 

If that were all it was, I'd be ok with it. But I'm getting quite a bit of sparking, and as I just wrote, extreme heat buildup in the wire leading to the R/R -- and eventually heat in the seat subframe itself. So I think something is not right here.

 

Did you check your power lead to your ignition switch? The switch should have everything shut down.

 

Not yet, but that's a good idea. The fact that the wire to the R/R gets hot within half a minute or so suggests there's a short somewhere -- the R/R itself may be fine.

What's going to make this difficult (among other things) is I can only leave the battery connected for a couple minutes at a time before things get too hot.

 

Disconnect the R/R and see if you still get a spark. If not, replace the R/R. If yes, keep looking.

 

If it is the OEM R/R I would test that first. Easy to do and very possible culprit.

 

Kai_ju, I unbolted the ground to the r/r, and still saw sparking from the battery. I then undid the connector to the r/r, and the sparking disappeared. Wish I wasn't so ignorant about electrical issues, but what does that tell me?

lazn, do you know of any instructions for testing the r/r?

Thanks all.

 

Sounds like I need the R/R, then. Just have to keep riding my Yamaha WR250 in the meantime. Just need to live without torque on demand for a while ....

 

I know you are past the point of diagnosing now for this problem, but in the future using the ammeter function of a multimeter is what I use for something like this. On a later model superhawk with the lcd meters you should see only about 50-75 milliamps max (.050-.075 A) on an ammeter connected between the negative batt terminal and its associated cable connector. Anything above that indicates a short.

A time consuming but logical and sure fire way to narrow it down is momentary disconnection/reconnection of various electrical connectors to isolate to an area. (Obviously you'd have to do that in short bursts if it's drawing 10 Amps or more!!)