Battery woes

After leaving the bike with a fully charged lithium battery for 17 days as I was hospitalized (all well now) I found the GRiSO with its battery completely dead. I thought it odd as with its normal drain the battery should have lasted at least 3 weeks. I figured, my mistake and ordered a new lithium battery. Now I should have tested the electrics first, but I didn't as I just assumed 17 days had just been a little too long for the battery.
So got my new battery, rode a day all well, parked the bike for the weekend. 3 days later I went to work, new battery completely dead (as in 1volt). Thankfully I was able to revive it after some effort (lithium loader refused to recognize it, so I used a conventional loader to get it to 7 volts and then the lithium loader was able to charge it) but it made me realize there must be some issue with the bike's electrics. Since then I've been pulling both main fuses after every ride just in case until I have time to investigate and that has worked flawlessly

I'll start eliminating things this afternoon, but before I start any usual wiring suspects that can discharge a battery this fast?

Perhaps I'm crazy, but here's an idea...... Whatever is draining your battery that fast has to be putting out some heat. Many new phones/devices have thermal imaging as a function in the cameras. Might this be a tool to search out a current draw? I've never tried it, but it seems logical, to a dumb ol' farm boy.

Have you got a usb socket wired in?
These have transformers (some are surprisingly high current draw)
if you have one it must be switched off or it will flat your batteries

rick pope wrote:

Perhaps I'm crazy, but here's an idea......  Whatever is draining your battery that fast has to be putting out some heat.  Many new phones/devices have thermal imaging as a function in the cameras.  Might this be a tool to search out a current draw?  I've never tried it, but it seems logical, to a dumb ol' farm boy.

That's an interesting idea but relies on A: a drain that happens continuously or regularly. If its something that draws a lot of power at random you'd have to watch the bike for maybe days before it happens. B: a drain that is so significant that it actually shows on thermal imaging. C: I'd actually have to have a thermal imaging device in the first place.
So I don't know if it will really provide much benefit over simply eliminating things one by one with a multimeter.

I suspect the drain is parasitic in nature as with the main fuses in the battery shows 13.23V and with the fuses pulled it shows 13.41V indicating something is drawing power. I'll figure it out. Unfortunately today it has been torrential rains for the entire day and I have to service the bike outside without shelter, so really couldn't do any electric-related stuff apart from that quick test. I did test the charging system which is fine thankfully.

This might help.
Look for anything non-standard and start from there.
USB chargers etc etc
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If you have a volt meter that can measure amperage, you can pull each switched fuse and measure across the connectors to see if there is any amperage flowing. This may help to track down what circuit may be bleeding the battery down.

Good morning,
You need to measure KOBD (key off battery drain), take a digital multimeter with capacity to measure 10 A DC, disconnect the battery positive cable and connect the multimeter in series. Look at your reading, if you have more than 0.030 A there is something causing an abnormal drain.
If that's the case, start to remove the fuses one by one and look at the readings, when the reading drops that's the circuit that is causing the drain. Identify the components in that circuit, re install the fuse and start disconnecting the components one by one looking at the multimeter readings. When you disconnect a component and the reading goes down, you've found it.
DO NOT TURN THE KEY ON WHEN PERFORMING THIS TEST. There is a reason why is called "key off" battery drain test.
Gaucho

The dasboard software has a bug that will appear randomly and couse the battery to die

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Well I did some testing but found nothing out of the ordinary. Charging system voltage is good, and amp draw looks allright too: initially a 5 seconds or so 150mA drain when the ECU boots up, and then an absolutely normal 2mA drain with spikes to 2.5mA whenever the dash led blinks.
This leaves me puzzled how the batteries drained so fast. It was raining heavily the entire week when it happened, but I assume any short due to water that could drain the entire battery would result in a burned fuse no? Perhaps I should redo the amp draw test while throwing buckets of water over the GRiSO

avgpetro wrote:

The dasboard software has a bug that will appear randomly and couse the battery to die

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Well that's annoying. Hoe exactly does this work? I.e. in my example I installed the new battery (without doing the key thing fix listed in that topic) then went for a ride, went back home 8 hours later, parked the bike and left it for a couple of days -> dead battery. Could that be caused by that bug?

motor-timothy wrote:

Well that's annoying. Hoe exactly does this work? I.e. in my example I installed the new battery (without doing the key thing fix listed in that topic) then went for a ride, went back home 8 hours later, parked the bike and left it for a couple of days -> dead battery. Could that be caused by that bug?

Its random. It may happen, it may not happen. Everytime, or never, or often, or rarely.
For me, the key thing is a standard procedure.

It may have nothing to do with the actual problem you're facing, its an easy, cost free solution - the kind I love.

Okey I've ran extensive tests and have managed to detect the problem. However the cause is still a mystery.

First of all with the main fuse pulled there is no ampdraw whatsoever, and even after a week of not riding the battery didn't even loose 0.01V

I did several Amp tests with my multimeter in series between the negative battery pole and cable (all accessories disconnected). The ECU initializes and there is a 150 mA draw for a couple of seconds which then drops to a 2mA draw with a 3mA spike from the dash led blinking. So far so good.

However today I did the test again and for a longer time and noticed there is also an odd cycle where every 3 seconds or so the mA rises slightly by 0.3mA per tick until it reaches 6mA after which it cycles down slowly until it reaches 2mA and it kept doing that little cycle. A bit odd but anyhow:

After 10 minutes of waiting, suddenly the amp draw spiked to 52mA. And I was like 'AHA!' it kept steady at 52mA after that. I have pulled all fuses one by one, removed all relays under the rear seat, disconnected the startus interruptus kit, disconnected the headlight and the two horns for good measure. However nothing I did had any effect on the amp draw. I tried the magical key procedure from avgpedro and that had no effect either.
Oddly enough pulling the main fuse and rebooting the ECU did not drop the amp drain back to 2mA, its now constantly at 52mA drain.

So I suppose I can either accept that it regularly drains this much, or try tracking down the problem. However since its the main circuit I'm a little in the dark how I can possibly track this drain down. Plus the chance it may be an ECU thing I can't do anything about?

Has anyone had a similar issue successfully solved? Which electronics on the main circuit are prone for this kind of drain?

I should note that the bike was a bit wet from the rain during today's test.

You are saying nothing would drop the current from 52mA, not even the main fuse?
No 52 mA is too much for a steady draw, that would flatten the battery in a couple of weeks for sure.
Do you have any non factory wiring or accessories at all? GPS, USB charger etc.

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Kiwi_Roy wrote:

You are saying nothing would drop the current from 52mA, not even the main fuse?
No 52 mA is too much for a steady draw, that would flatten the battery in a couple of weeks for sure.
Do you have any non factory wiring or accessories at all? GPS, USB charger etc.

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No, pulling the main fuse prevents any amp draw.
I've disconnected all accessories as well as the non factory wiring, but that had no impact.

Just curious. Do you leave your ignition key in the ignition switch or close to it?

kiwi dave wrote:

Just curious.  Do you leave your ignition key in the ignition switch or close to it?

It was either in my pocket during testing or in the lock of the seat.

So it might have been close enough to communicate with the antennae surrounding the ignition switch. Worth a try to move it a bit further away and see if the discharging stops.

Key in ignition doesn’t drain the battery. The antenna isn’t active unless the keyswitch is on.

beetle wrote:

Key in ignition doesn’t drain the battery. The antenna isn’t active unless the keyswitch is on.

That's what I thought too. But it was happening. Not on a GRiSO, but a V85TT. Are they wired different I wonder?

So from examining the complicated headache inducing electrics schematic, I can rule out the starter motor, fuel pump, stepper motor, both injectors, and both coils, the head- and tail lights, brake light and the indicators as these are all fused through the separate 15A fuses or run through one of the underseat relays (all 4 of which I removed during testing) correct?

Which leaves only a small number of electric components on the main 30A circuit, namely the alternator, the key switch and the ECU. Am I missing any components here?

Also, reading the schematic it seems the most left-sided 30A fuse under the seat leads to the alternator and the key switch (green-red wire), while the more right-side 30A fuse leads to the instrument panel and key switch (red-white wire). Am I reading the schematic correctly? Cause that would rule out the alternator as the current draw is only through this fuse.

kiwi dave wrote:

That's what I thought too.  But it was happening.  Not on a GRiSO, but a V85TT.  Are they wired different I wonder?

Only Guzzi knows what's going on inside the V85 dash, but it appears to be a gizmo wonderland compared to the GRiSO.

The 5AM is a simple thing, that usually works, or doesn't. Not much in between. Having said that, it would be worth disconnecting it, just in case there's a circuit locked up. If the drain disappears, then you can concentrate on circuits fed by the ECU. The lambda probe springs to mind.

beetle wrote:

The 5AM is a simple thing, that usually works, or doesn't. Not much in between. Having said that, it would be worth disconnecting it, just in case there's a circuit locked up. If the drain disappears, then you can concentrate on circuits fed by the ECU. The lambda probe springs to mind.

I tried disconnecting the ECU but I wasn't able to as the side openings under the wings are too small for my hands to unlock the connectors. I was tempted to just cut the lambda probe wires since the beetle map doesn't use it anyway, but decided against that Taking off the fuel tank seems necessary to disconnect the ECU?

In which case it will be something for a warm day in the spring. At least now I know the drain is roughly 55mAH which means my 6AH battery can last up to 4 days (3 to take it safe).


ps. can this drain be related to the odd start behavior my bike has? When I start the dash dims then turns completely blank. The bike starts anyway and the dash jumps back to life. It has been doing that for ages.

motor-timothy wrote:

I tried disconnecting the ECU but I wasn't able to as the side openings under the wings are too small for my hands to unlock the connectors. I was tempted to just cut the lambda probe wires since the beetle map doesn't use it anyway, but decided against that    Taking off the fuel tank seems necessary to disconnect the ECU?

No need to remove the tank. Doing that still won't give you access. It's extremely simple. Remove the small cover from the front, then remove the two screws fixing the ECU to the frame. You can pull it far enough forward to disconnect.


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Quote :

ps. can this drain be related to the odd start behavior my bike has? When I start the dash dims then turns completely blank. The bike starts anyway and the dash jumps back to life. It has been doing that for ages.

That's not normal. That suggests a massive voltage drop.

Timothy, Might be time to check your earthing points to ensure they have zero resistance...

As Mark says, such a large voltage drop is not normal nor good.

motor-timothy wrote:

Kiwi_Roy wrote:

You are saying nothing would drop the current from 52mA, not even the main fuse?
No 52 mA is too much for a steady draw, that would flatten the battery in a couple of weeks for sure.
Do you have any non factory wiring or accessories at all? GPS, USB charger etc.

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No, pulling the main fuse prevents any amp draw.
I've disconnected all accessories as well as the non factory wiring, but that had no impact.

If pulling the smaller fuses had no effect, only the main fuse dropped the current does that mean the current is heading for the alternator across the Green/Red wire?
I seem to recall Pete Roper told us something about a wiring fault on some of the alternator plugs, a two prong plug in a "T" configuration, apparently only one pin is to be alive.

The other 30 Amp fuse feeds the Dash, could it be something it's turning on?
If you could double check that none of the small fuses interrupts the 52 mA that would be huge.
The Lamda probe should be powered off the Main Injection Relay.