Hi guys, prepare for a bit of a story so you know everything that happened,
So... I recently shipped my '07 Nightster from Canada to Sydney. Even though the battery was disconnected for the shipment it was dead once it arrived, I charged it and rode the bike home.
To meet Australian standards I had to connect a red brake light and have orange signals (rather than the red lenses, with dual filament bulbs that act as signals/running light/ brake light in North America), so I cut the the negative, blue, and red and yellow wires (after checking both a wiring diagram and that I was on the right side of the harness with a voltmeter) spliced the negative and saudered them to the new light in their respected positions. I also checked the new wires with the voltmeter before connecting the light. The lights worked fine.
Then I had two weeks to wait for my import plates to arrive. I assumed while I was doing all this wiring, I drained the battery cause I was constantly turning the ignition on to ACC to check voltages and see if lights worked etc without actually starting the bike. So today, since I planned to pick up the import plates tomorrow, I decided I would plug the bike into my trickle charger. DID NOT REALIZE AUSTRALIAN OUTLETS ARE 240V AC! Where as in NA we are only 120V AC... probably fried the trickle charger and had to reset the fuse for the house... After this incident, I bump started the bike— started first go. And while I was riding around the block I noticed several strange things:
1.) The bike was revving really high, in waves (it usually does rev a little higher when cold because it is fuel injected... but this seemed excessive)
2.) It started to sputter making a weird pulsing noise somewhere near the air intake
3.) Message on my speedo of BATTERY/ or BUZZER/ or something of the sort.... I read another guys forum and he had a message of Bus er which means the serial data bus has shorted out... his turned out to be a fried battery which is great (http://www.hdforums.com/forum/sportster-models/751071-nightster-wont-start-bus-er-on-speedo-3.html )
I have now checked the voltage of the battery and I get these voltages in the respected ignition positions: OFF 11.5; ACC 10.9; IGN 8.3. I also checked the fuses of the fuel pump, accessory, and battery, and accessory plug fuse (Red 7.5 Amp fuse) and they were all fine... I think it is probably just a battery issue...but the noises during the ride made me nervous. Let me know what you boys think! Much appreciated.
