Battery Losing Charge

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masterguns

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OK, this may be a little lengthy. Previously had a JM CB and Zumo 500 wired directly to the battery via the wiring harness from JM Audio. No issues at all. Wanted to install additional farkles, led lights, and maybe a cruise control, so thought I'd install the FZ1 fuse block first; which I did this last Saturday. I also installed two powerlet dc outlets, the rear set from MCL and another directy from Powerlet which I installed on the right side faring. Both dc power lets are connected directly to the battery using the harness that came with them. I say this because there are only two wires for either dc outlet; one red and one black so it would be really stupid to hook these up incorrectly. Red being power and black being ground. All went well. I used the tail light to provide power to the switched feature of the FZ1. Also, black to directly to battery ground post and red directly to battery positive post. I am currently using only two fuses of the FZ1, unswitched 5 amp for the JM CB unit and 2 amp for the Zumo. Everything looks great and devices tied in power up as they should. Problem: Yesterday afternoon, just for something to do, I attempted to start the beast just to hear her sit there and run and was surprised that the battery was low. Checked everything out and couldn'f find anything wrong. I removed the GPS totally, connected a trickle charger and about 15 minutes later, she fired right up. So, I left the charger on for another hour or so and when the battery was fully charged she fired right up again. So, I disconnected the battery charger; left the GPS off and that was that for the evening. This morning before pulling out of the garage in my car, I thought I'd try starting the bike again since it had set all night, key off with absolutey nothing drawing any power (no GPS even mounted, and the JM turned off. Again the battery has discharged enough to a point where she would not turn over fast enough to fire. Thanks for reading this far; if anyone has. I've re-traced all my work and assume the following: The powerlets even though tired directly to the battery, will not alone draw power unless something in plugged into the outlet socket; warm gear, cell phone, etc. If I have two devices hooked to the FZ1 using unswitched power and these two devices are not turned on, there should be no power drain. If I have two devices hooked to the FZ1 using switched power, and the key is off, nothing will be drawing power from the battery. Any advise or comments would be greatly appreciated concerning this issue. Finally, one question. Where do most connect the FZ1 to obtain switched power when the FZ1 is installed under the seat; the rear tail light? If so, what color is the rear tail light wire? I think I connected it to the blue wire, can't recall and I am at work so I can't check right now.

 
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Blue wire is tail light power, and many people do use that as a switched 12V source for their fuzeblock.

There are two ways to determine which of the new added farkles are causing the battery drain.

The quick way is to disconnect your battery negative (black) terminals and use an ammeter inline to complete the circuit and measure the battery drain current. As you said, none of your new farkles should be draining the battery, but I agree that one of them seems to be. While measuring the drain (always with key off) disconnect your new farkles one at a time until the drain current drops dramatically.

The slow way (if you have no access to an ammeter or don't know how to use one) is also to systematically disconnect each of the new farkles, one at a time, but then recharging the battery and testing the following morning (either the battery voltage or the start/no-start) as the indication.

I would suspect the two items that are connected to be "always on" first. Even though the units may be "off" they may have a parasitic drain with power applied. You could just pull out the fuses from the FZ1 to disable those.

 
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