300 CC battery problem By xringracing (Read 2,254 times)

[xringracing]

Well, anyone following my posts knows I'm working through lots of issues. 

The newest problem is as follows: 

Woke up the other day and the scooter was dead. I couldn't figure out what the heck happened as I've had no battery issues since buying the scoot 2 1/2 weeks ago. Then i remembered I had installed led mirrors the day before and had my ignition switch on and off for awhile while doing the install and proceeded to go on a short night ride right after the mirros were installed,  using the low and high beams to see if I had fixed my headlight issue.  Figuring the battery was low from all the action the night before, I thought no biggie, I have a 1.1 amp auto/ trickle charger that i've been using for my old 50cc scooter battery for 3 years now.  So I plugged it in and off to bed I went. When I woke up I noticed the charger led's indicated the battery was not yet fully charged. So I left it charging and came back a few hours later to find the scooter totally dead. No clock, no nothing. I then discovered the fuse holder on the positive lead by the battery had melted and was toast! Praying that my entire electrical system had not been toasted, I wired up a temp fuse in place of the old one and I hooked up jumper cables from my truck and only got a click or two and then dead. Then I started my truck, with my truck running my scoot came back to life! My truck battery may have very well been low, not sure why it had to be running. As I haven't been driving it much since I lost my job last week! 

Anyway I also noticed the old battery plug cell cover had raised up.  

Now I did not have much faith that this battery was in excellent shape because I know the previous owner had not trickled charged it over the winter or rode it much last summer. I'm perplexed as to why it fried and the fuse melted also. I have been using this charger for years now on my old scoot, and on my vehicles with no issues.

So I have 4 questions for you all.

1. Why did it fry?
2. How do I know it's not the chargers fault?
3. Why would the scoot take a jump only when the truck was running?
4. What kind of battery should I pursue?

I went out this evening and got one hell of a deal at Walmart. They had the battery priced wrong and I ended up getting a 50.00 battery for 25.00! Since I am out of work, I am very happy with this of course. The battery is identical in size. But I fear it may be smaller in AH.

My old battery reads: MFA12V9AH. GTX7A-BS. This leads me to believe it is marked both for 7AH and 9AH???

My new battery is rated at 8AH. The size of it is a ES9BS. 

Should I worry about finding another battery before I fill this and charge it? I have plans to upgrade to led's , add more led lighting and add a stereo down the road to the scoot. What do you all recommend? Like I said I'm out of work, but if I should go out and find a higher MA battery I will if need be, I still consider the scoot to be a huge money saver, when I do find another job or get called back, it saves me tons of gas money instead of using my 13.8 gal fuel hog of a 5.0 liter Mountaineer!

[Bashan]

I'm hitting the sack but just two things for everybody reading. Never jump your bike with the other vehicle running, you stand a really good chance of frying the electricals. Just attach the other battery and hit the starter. Two, Buy the biggest battery, most powerful CCA, and any other number on the battery (except volts!) that will fit in your battery box or where you want to mount it. The bike only draws what it needs and too much capacity is not possible. You could hook a semi battery up to your scooter and it would not hurt a thing. As long as it's fully charged whn you hook it up it will not stress out your stator. Stators get hot from shunting excess voltage anyway, put those electrons to good use. Rich

[cyborg]

i would think the 8ah battery will be fine,,,,,and as a side note good luck with the job,,,,,i too use my scooter and other 2 wheelers as commuters,,i not only love to ride but it's a heck of alot easier to put $6-7 bux in the tank instead of $70-80

[xringracing]

Yes Rich, I'm glad you said something about the jumper vehicle running, I actually had read something about that and had totally forgotten. It is a bad idea, hopefully I didn't do any damage.

In regards to as high CCA as possible, I'm aware of that, but in terms of scooters, I just don't know how big they get. Physically I think this is the largest size chassis that will fit.

Doing a little more research this morning, the battery I bought is 120 CCA. So far I have found a 190 CCA in the same chassis size. That does seem to be a huge difference, but it's also 80.00....

[xringracing]

Ok, I removed the old melted fuse holder and installed a new inline mini ATM fuse holder. I then installed a new battery and purchased a new charger with floating capability. I don't think my old charger was bad, but I didn't want to risk damage to the new battery. The scooter was still dead, even the clock. After checking everything out I noticed the fuse had blown. I replaced the fuse and all seems to be ok. the scooter is once again cranking fine and i don't see any other wire damage. It won't start, but my buddy has agreed to come out and help me with the starting / idling issues, hopefully this weekend.

What's bothering me is the fact that I discovered whenever I hook the charger up to the battery while it is installed in the scooter, it, the fuse blows. What would cause this? Did I wire the led mirrors up incorrectly? My original plan was to tap both wires from the led mirror into both factory blinker wires (each blinker has two wires). When i did this the blinkers in the mirror would not work. To get them working correctly, I tapped only the positive lead into the factory blinkers, and grounded both of the negative leads directly to the chassis. Is this incorrect and causing my fuse blowing issue, and possibly my previous damage that occurred? I have a background in automotive electronics and this was common practice to ground audio equipment directly to the chassis. Is this a no no, on scooter electrical systems?

[Bashan]

You put the charger right on the battery terminals and the fuse pops!? That should run right through the battery! You're not grounding the black lead on the frame or other ground? Not to insult your intelligence but the polarities are correct I'm assuming? I'd guess shorted battery but it's new, so take that off of the table. Bad R/R and diode but if you're going right through the battery with the charger it shouldn't affect that. Maybe it would though...hmmm....with a leaky diode. I don't see how the light install could do that, I would have did it the same way. But unhook it and see if it changes anything.....you know how this all goes sometimes...throw darts. Rich

[xringracing]

You put the charger right on the battery terminals and the fuse pops! YEP

You're not grounding the black lead on the frame or other ground? NOPE

Not to insult your intelligence but the polarities are correct I'm assuming? YEP

.....you know how this all goes sometimes... BOY DO I!   

[df300]

Any update on getting it started and running I just had this happen to mine

[xringracing]

I got so frustrated, I took it to a shop that fixes chinese scooter. The frustration hasn't faded, because now the shop hasn't started on it...after 3 weeks! I can't believe I am missing at least half of the riding season after getting a scooter with only 700 miles on it  I bought it in April nonetheless , which around here is getting in the game early.

I'm am not a happy camper at the moment. 

After having both good and bad experiences with chinese scooters, I can tell you my next purchase will not be chinese. Even if I fix this one and get a few years of use out of it, the down time and the things that have to be "redone", is not worth it. Especially when a used Honda Reflex can be had fairly cheap. 

[xringracing]

On another note, if the kill switch grounds the engine to kill it, then doesn't that in of itself create a short that could have caused my charger to overcharge the battery and cause all of this havoc in the first place? Do any of you worry about the position of that kill switch when charging your batteries?

[Bashan]

The killswitch grounds the coil or CDI but has no connection to the battery. The ignition switch often cuts the red cable connection to the black wire to cut power to the CDI which kills the bike. On GY6s the ignition switch generally kills the bike by grounding the coil on the same wire as the killswitch. But it would be a stretch for any of these scenarios to be associated with your problem.

Can you draw me a schematic of how you wired the LEDs? That's got to be the problem because it didn't do it before that. Go get the bike, we'll rewire the thing if we have to. You know wiring, I can help, Jack and Alley can help. You need the bucks right now, don't waste them on the clowns at that shop. Rich

[Alleyoop]

Got to agree, if the battery is going dead you either have a bad draw on it just sitting there and is draining your battery, which seems to be since installing the HD's. The people at the shops are not your electrical gurus by no means they usually cannot handle adjusting a carb right. They also leave crap disconnected they are not a tidy group by no means.

Why not verify, disconnect your lights from the battery or wherever you are sending juice to them. Charge up your battery and then test the battery and test your charging system(very easy to do). That will either verify the HD's are the problem and or The R/R or Stator is the problem and those can be easly tested.

All you need is a MULIT METER and RICH will guide you step by step on how and what to check.
Alleyoop

[xringracing]

Hey guys, I'm in a rush to get to be on time tonight, so this may be a little short. I'll just recap a few things.

I added mirrors with led turn signals in them. I didn't upgrade to HD lights as Alley mistakenly mentioned. There's only led's in the mirrors, no bulbs, and i did no other add on's to the bike.

I do not believe the LED lights caused my issue. I believe the reason the battery needed to be charged is because I had the ignition turned on and off throughout the installation process, which was a few hours by the time I was finished. I simply think the battery was low due to having the lights on while testing during installation, and then taking a short ride at night that was not long enough to re-charge the battery fully. I also don't believe the original battery was in 100% operating condition to begin with due to the previous owner riding it maybe 2 times last season with no trickle charge ever used.

I could be totally wrong about the mirrors. But one thing I'm sure of, I just can't convince myself I wired the mirrors the wrong way. However if the mirrors caused a short, it could be due to internal wires inside the mirrors. you do have to be very careful during installation because you have to spin the mirrors which twists the wires internally. I was very aware of this during the install and don't think I twisted the wiring, but it's possible.

As far as how I wired them? I simply put both grounds to the same chassis screw under the front faring. While tapping the positive wires on both front blinkers with 3M T-Taps. The left mirror positive lead tapped into the left blinker positive wire. The right side done the same way.

You are right Rich, I don't have the money to throw around. I appreciate the fact that you remember that Normally I have the patience to stick with it. But when my buddy came over and we spent the entire day tearing this thing to the bone and not getting anywhere...except to look at these plastic parts all over ny garage, and 2 ziplock baggies full of fasteners... it's just tore me down mentally and I couldn't talk myself into messing with it anymore. Even although I had an idea of a problem after collecting my thoughts. Part of it is due to other things going on in my life at the moment. It was kind of the last straw sort thing. To top it all off, my wife got in an accident with her car that we just bought for her 6 months ago... for various reasons, we will not be able to get it repaired by the insurance company. So I spent yesterday using my tie down straps hooked to my tree doing some backyard body work..stretching the metal back out close to spec. She's good mechanically, but down the road i need a hood, fender and new bumper cover. good thing I took 2 years of autobody tech back in high school...lol. I surprised myself how good i got the crushed support members back into shape with my diy stretcher Anyway.. .that's another story..

The good news is my wife starts a new job tomorrow, making more $ than the job she got laid off from. I've been back to work to a temp to hire position for the past month... so financially I'm back on track to recovery.

Ok, to get back on track... here's what i know so far. The guy I took the scooter to sells and repairs chinese and other brand scooters and motorcycles. He's a one man shop and seemed top be very honest and knowledgable. He just happened to have A Jonway 250 on his rack when i stopped by. And had some Ice Bears sitting around also. That's the only reason I wanted to try him out. Although I would have rather fixed it myself with help from you guys, between my frustration and need to deal with other things in my life.. I could justify a 200.00 repair bill, just in gas savings alone, had I been able to drive it to work the last 3 weeks. Anyway while checking out the scooter myself, I did discover the wires to the kill switch were fused together. I separated and fixed what I could see. but still no spark. Got fed up and you know the rest of the story. The good news is, the shop contacted me today and he took the entire switch assembly out including the wiring harness and discovered there were melted wires further down, including the sheathing. an entire new switch assembly has been ordered and should be in this week. If i am very lucky, this will solve the issue. I did not discover any burnt wires anywhere else on the bike. If I am not so lucky, well.... I will be making a decision how to proceed from there.

The question remains... what caused the battery charger to overcharge the system and cause burnt wires in the 1st place?

So to the other poster with no spark issue, I would check the starter switch assembly and look for burnt wires....


If I am lucky enough to fix this bike, I will never charge the battery again while it's hooked to the scooter wiring. I know this should be a non issue, as i did it all the time on my previous scoot for 4 years with no problems. But if this one has some kind of issue, but charges and runs fine, I'll just charge the battery if need be, with the scooter unhooked.

I will also think long and hard before hooking up the led's in my mirrors.

Alley and Rich, you've been awesome, I appreciate all the help so far. I will keep this thread updated, hopefully with good news by the end of the week.

[Bashan]

The ignition switch is shorted! When you put the charger on there it shorts back to frame and pops a fuse. The ignition shorted from leaving the key on so much I bet. If the key is shorted it could have shorted to the killwire and gone to the CDI so make sure the CDI is OK when all of this shakes out. This doesn't have to do with the killswitch, it's probably within the key switch itself. Gaaahd, I can't believe I didn't think of that....sorry. Rich

[Bashan]

I talked to Jack and he agrees there's a short. He said you could take the battery out and do some continuity testing and probably determine where the short is. For example test red to frame and black to frame and black to red. Depending on those findings it might tell you where the short is. He was asking me about your fuse configuration and I wasn't entirely sure. I guess this is all moot since your friend has it but maybe we can help in the future. Rich