Bike wont start - Hornet F4

Bike wont start - Hornet F4

Author
Discussion

Unbusy

934 posts

98 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
quotequote all
lindrup119 said:
Probably will get the battery changed anyway, but (and sorry if this is a silly question) even with a slightly duff battery surely the bike would start from a jump?
You would think wouldn't you, but not always.
Thats why i suggested taking the bike battery out of the equation to fault find.
A weird internal short within the bike battery may only be apparent when the battery is under a high load.
Another battery in parallel with the bike battery will feed the short rather than turn the bike over. Path of least resistance and all that.
Im too far away to help in person, but willing to talk on the blower if you get totally stuck.

Marlin45

1,327 posts

165 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
quotequote all
Don't replace the battery until you find the cause!

Is the reg/rec actually delivering the volts once you start the bike? Get someone if your not up to it to check the volts delivered to the battery when idling and when the throttle is opened a bit. You should see 14.1-14.2v at the batt when you give it a rev. If the battery is fully charged 12.5v'ish. If the reg/rec is faulty and delivering low or high volts you will just kill another battery.

WaferThinHam

1,680 posts

131 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
quotequote all
Unbusy said:
lindrup119 said:
Probably will get the battery changed anyway, but (and sorry if this is a silly question) even with a slightly duff battery surely the bike would start from a jump?
You would think wouldn't you, but not always.
Thats why i suggested taking the bike battery out of the equation to fault find.
A weird internal short within the bike battery may only be apparent when the battery is under a high load.
Another battery in parallel with the bike battery will feed the short rather than turn the bike over. Path of least resistance and all that.
Im too far away to help in person, but willing to talk on the blower if you get totally stuck.
Generally yes, but if they're really knackered sometimes they don't have enough power to prime the fuel pump, run the dash, lights, coils etc. I've had a couple that were pretty reluctant, but got them going in the end.

Marlin45 said:
Don't replace the battery until you find the cause!
What if it is just a knackered battery.

Check the simplest/quickest stuff first is how I tend to fault find (mainly because of laziness).

A battery is quick and cheap to swap, especially if you have a mate that has a known working one. Where are you based OP, and have you tried to bump it yet.

lindrup119

Original Poster:

1,228 posts

144 months

Tuesday 31st May 2016
quotequote all
Thanks for all the suggestions.

The bike was picked up and delivered to the garage on Friday and they found that the battery leads had been removed and then reattached poorly to allow space for a trickle charger.

All fixed now - Traxden garage in W.London highly recommended.

The next headache I have is with my "breakdown" recovery service. I don't know if anyone else here uses 2Gether, but my advice would be don't. I certainly won't be a customer for much longer. I arranged a home start Thursday evening, but they just sent a recovery truck. When I called to question they said "oh yeah, we can't actually really do anything with bikes. We'll try and jump start them but if that doesn't work we just recover them".

Needless to say I was a little miffed as I was hoping to avoid the bike being loaded and unloaded by morons with zero mechanical sympathy. Fast forward to Friday evening when I went to pick up the bike, I found a rear indicator strapped up with masking tape and a nice crack in the rear fairing. Courtesy of my fantastic recovery service...

But at least she runs. If it wasn't for bad luck I wouldn't have any luck at all.