gl 1200 battery drain

[johnp322]

Can anyone help. I have a 1984 goldwing aspencade that appears to have a battery drain issue. Once i remove the negative terminal and place my meter fron the ground wire to the neg. terminal I read about 11.00 volts dc. I have pulled all the fuses but can not seem to isolate the problem. The service manual says it should be 0 volts.

Any ideas

Thanks


John P

[Bandanna]

WELCOME JOHNP322.......

IS THE BATTERY ITSELF LOSING THE CHARGE?? ie.(buckled internal plates,low electrolite levels?)

USUALLY WHEN YOU START TO DRAIN POWER,IT IS USUALLY A GROUNDING FAULT.(bad earth)

ARE YOU RUNNING CRUISE/DAY LIGHTS??

TEST THE OUTPUT FOR THE ALTERNATOR TOO,AS YOU MAY WELL BE DRAWING AMPAGE FOR NORMAL USE,BUT NOT PUTTING ENOUGH BACK IN TO REPLACE.

AN ALTERNATOR IS ONLY DESIGNED TO REPLACE WHAT IS TAKEN OUT OF THE BATTERY,NOT FULLY CHARGE A SEMI/FLAT BATTERY.

VOLTAGE REGULATOR ALSO MAY BE WORTH A CHECK.........

ENJOY YOUR TIME WITH US.........


SAFE RIDING............

[Wing84]

Remove the negative cable of the batterie and place a 12V light buld in serie between the batterie and the cable, if the light doesn't go on your problem is the batterie, just replace it! if the light goes bright you do a power loss, remove all fuses and check again, the light should stay off or extremely pale (the clock draw a little power) put back the fuse one-by-one and do the test each time, when the light will be bright again you just found the bad circuit. Most of the time when that happen it's corrosion in light buld socket but you always have the other time where the radio or other goodies turn sour.

Never unplug the batteries when the engine is running you will burn the dashboard.

[Dougal]

With the gound cable removed form the negative terminal of the battery, there will always be some current flow, it should be measured with an ampmeter.
If the current is more than a few milliamps,try swapping out the rectifier/regulator unit. It may be faulty.

Dougal

[johnp322]

Hello again I have made some progress on the battery drain on my 1984 aspencade with the help of you guys. I have found that the majority of the problerm appears to be the clock drawing to much current( 7-8 mA) which i have disconnected untill i can find a replacment. Can some one tell me what does the 7.5 amp fuse do which is located inside the fairing on the left side. Without it installed everything appears to work.

Thanks again


John P

[Wing84]

you have two fuse there, one is for the radio and the other one for the amplifier, I think the 7.5 is for the amplifier.

[Wing84]

I have a dealer shop manual, and what they said is the 20 Amp fuse is for all the radio/cassette/cb system and the 7.5 Amp is for the back-up pwer supply (radio memory and stuff) the clock is also powered by the 7.5 Amp fuse, so if when you unplug the clock the draw stop you found your problem.

[Try]

I have a 1984 goldwing aspencade

Hello and welcome aboard johnp322, a lot of ideas around
this board. Feel free to join in our discussions.

[johnp322]

With the clock disconnected and the radio remove the current draw is 1.5mA which I presume is to retain the mileage on the trip computer. Is this normal?

Also on the clock I noticed that there is no backlight on the dsiplay like the radio has. Is this also normal.

Thanks again for all your help I look forward to talking again

John P

[Wing84]

1.5mA is within range for an Aspencade, for the backlight they always go out, on mine I just stop worried about it. It's a little anoying at night but anyway we can't really ride at night over here, the amount of deer on the road is incredible.