I ride a newish KLX300 that I haven’t had any problems with yet. Today I decided to go on a quick after work ride to the canyon near my house. The canyon’s mostly dirt roads and gets rough near the top.
As I was working my way slowly over a rough patch the bike suddenly shut off. The engine died and the instrument panel lost power. The bike is EFI so I figure I lost electricity which caused the engine to die as well.
I checked what I could like fuses and obvious connections that might have come loose. I ended up catching a ride down the canyon and went back up later to trailer the bike down.
My initial suspicion is that the battery lost charge. I figure this could be due to a bad battery or a bad stator. Any tips on how to determine if the stator is bad? I’m hoping to go over things with a multi meter now that I’ve got the bike home.
Update: I was able to find some time to test the battery with my voltmeter this afternoon. Voltage looks fine with the ignition off - but as soon as I turn the ignition on the voltage drops to near 0. So I believe the battery is dead.
I think the next question is if the battery is bad or the charging system. I'm going to throw the battery on a charger overnight and see if it will hold a charge. If the battery holds a charge I'll likely take the bike to the shop to get the stator, etc. checked out.
Almost any autoparts store will hook the battery up to a real load-tester so you'll know for sure. If you have a solid-state voltage regulator, they can fail instantly without warning. Ye Olde Fashioned mechanical ones usually show up: turn on high-beams, grab brakes, and you'll see the headlights dim. Did you test the battery cables? Were they tight and clean? (That seems like it should be a GoldMember quote.) Were the cable-ends tight? I had a positive simply slide right out of the factory-crimped end...