New Battery...Still No Start

[Maggie May]

Hi everyone. I'm new to riding so there could (and hopefully is) a very simple solution to my problem here. Please, feel free to point out the obvious. :) I bought the bike used about a week ago, and was told that it had excessive valve noise and needed top end work. The guy I bought it from said it needed to be jumped each time it was started so it would definitely need a new battery. Jumped, it would start, but once the engine cut off, it was back to stage A. Jump, ride, die. It was still a great deal on an '01 bike so I got it anyways.
After getting it home, it seemed the first thing to do was to get a new battery. After putting in the battery it ran for about half an hour before the lights dimmed and it quit. So, I got a battery charger. The guy at the shop only charged it for half an hour. I left it on the charger overnight to ensure a full charge, and Success! That morning it did start right up.
Until the next day.
I assumed since it started the day before no problem, that it would start up fine today, but the starter seems to click, click, click...nothing. Until there are fewer and fewer clicks and the poor thing just won't respond.
This is my first bike, and I know about zero, other than how to ride it, so any info will be helpful.
Thanks,
Maggie

[Sarris]

Sounds like a bad stator or regulator.

Take it to a good shop for diagnosis and repair, it's a charging issue, not the battery.

You can damage the new battery via the full recharge/full discharge cycle, so you need to get it done sooner than later.

Good luck and let us know what they find.

Welcome to our world.

:)

[Easy Rider]

Take it to a good shop for diagnosis and repair, it's a charging issue, not the battery.


:plus1:

OR it is a discharging issue, meaning that everything is not OFF when you think it is.
You weren't turning the key all the way over to PARK, were you ??

I hope you got a REAL good price on the bike......because you might be looking at near a grand in repair costs for an engine rebuild (for the noises) and charging system repair.

I don't suppose you took it to a shop for a check-out before you bought it, did you ?? :cry:

Welcome to the forum. I hope we can give you some good news next time.....or you can tell US that the noises were just valves that needed adjustment and that the battery problem WAS leaving the tail light on all night. :cool:

[Water Warrior 2]

Like Easy said, you might have turned the key fully to the left to the park position which leaves the tail light on and will discharge the battery overnight. Charge the battery again overnight and see if it will hold a charge. Hopefully this will end the power woes. As for the noisy engine it could be a variety of things but you will need a decent technician to tell you the situation.
Did you or are you familiar with checking the oil level ? How many miles on the bike ? Keep us in the loop as we love to help new riders.

[jonathan180iq]

I think it's a discharge issue as well.

My sister-in-law's scooter was having the same problem. Turned out to be a faulty starter relay. I don't know if this even a possibility on the GZ, as I no longer have one to look at, but it's something to consider.

I also once had this problem on my '85 Saab. It was a bad A/C compressor relay that would drain the batter in less than 2 hours. I was baffled until I heard a "click" that I wasn't used to and tracked it down and discovered the problem.

[mrlmd1]

For the umpteenth time on here - if you get a new battery, (they're all sealed AGM's now), it MUST BE FULLY CHARGED UP before put into first use, like starting the bike for the first time, or it will never hold a full charge, no matter how long you charge it after that.

If the bike starts when jumping from a new battery, that will give you a clue. If you jump it from a car, just connect the car battery, do NOT run the car engine, the car alternator will fry the electronics on the GZ, it can't handle the output from a car alternator.

You can easily and simply test the charging system on the bike by starting it, (battery in place), jump it if you have to, and measure the voltage at the battery with the bike running at mid speed. If you're getting 13.5-14V, your charging system is OK.

If the bike starts and runs after jumping it, if the alternator output is OK, then remove the battery, charge it, bring it back to the dealer and have him do a load test on it and see if it's any good. It's not sufficient to measure the voltage, it needs to be load tested. If you get a new battery, make sure you charge it fully before using it or it will fail too.

As I've said here before, start looking at the simple things that fail, not the more exotic things that usually don't fail. Proceed to diagnose the problem in an orderly fashion. I bet you anything the battery is the problem.

[dannylightning]

do you have extra lights and such crap hooked up to your bike, from what i have come to understand the gz cant handle a lot of extra things on it that will consume power, some people put extra headlights and break lights and things that light up pretty colors on their bikes plus other things. if you have any thing like that on your bike make sure they have a on and off switch so they are not drawing power when you don't want them too. if they are wired to the bike so they come on as soon as you turn the key to the on position, it might be drawing too much power when you go to start it up.

to me it sounds like either your battery was not fully charged when you gave it the first start or something is drawing too much power and that is why it will start with a jump and not with out one. when jumping the bike you would be getting extra starting power. if it stays running after you remove the jumper cables it may not be any kind of charging sysetm issues as mrlmd1 stated. and as she said also i would take that battery back out and have it load tested. your battery should be charged 100% full before the first start, that is completely ture but.............

you only want to trickle charge/slow charge your battery, the fast charge option is hell on your battery and will wear it out fast, not sure what a fast charge will hurt a brand new battery or not. if you did a over night fast charge on the battery that may or may have not come in to pay with your starting issue.

valve noise, you should be able to hear the valves clicking, most say when you cant hear the valves that is when you know it's in need of adjusting, im not exactly sure what ecessive valve sounds like or what kind of problems that can cause but any good mechanic should be able to listen to the bike run for a second and tell you if you do have excessive valve noise or if its just normal valve noise. but you should definitely get it checked out before something major goes wrong. if all you need is a valve adjustment it should only be a few hundred dolor's

if the starter is clicking and gradually starts clicking slower and slower that means that the battery is running out of juice, the less juice the battery has the slower that starter will click.

[alantf]

if all you need is a valve adjustment it should only be a few hundred dolor's



Jeeeeeeeeeeezussssssssssssssss - a few hundred dollars - You are joking, aren't you? :cry: I'd want 'em to fit brand new, gold plated ones, for that! :blush:

[dannylightning]

well some one i know took their bike in and it ended up needed a valve adjustment, they said it cost around 200 dolor's. not sure where they went or if they and any thing else done. but the price was around 200 bucks, valve adjustment is all they mentioned, so i was assuming that was all they had done. i have no idea hot to do one or what is entailed, never looked in to it to see how much time it takes or how easy it is.. figured it must have been a pain in the butt.

[Water Warrior 2]

A valve check and adjust runs about 1 hour labor at whatever the shop charges per hour. Add in a new plug and an additional few % just for fun. No labor charge for the new plug, the old one has to come out for the valve check. Engine must be cold when the job is done for proper settings.

[dannylightning]

well im glad to hear they usually don't cost that much, when i need one that is probably something i will go to the shop for.

messing with valves seems kind of scary.

[Water Warrior 2]

well im glad to hear they usually don't cost that much, when i need one that is probably something i will go to the shop for.

messing with valves seems kind of scary.


Danny, your V-twin is about double the time involved.

[dannylightning]

well im glad to hear they usually don't cost that much, when i need one that is probably something i will go to the shop for.

messing with valves seems kind of scary.


Danny, your V-twin is about double the time involved.

o rats, 75 bucks a hour times 2..... never thought about that.

[GZ250]

my dealership charges $75/hr for valve adjustment and last time they charged for 1.5 hrs. It was over $100 something. So how much time is realistic/justified for GZ? Next time I was thinking that I will tell them that I will pay only for an hr.

battery issue: sometime the new batteris also turn out bad. i had the similar experience, the battery simply stopped holding charge. (you will know that by load test).

[Maggie May]

Hi everyone, thanks for all the responses. Sorry about the delay in responding. After my original post here, my fiancee and I read through some more of the forums and found a lot of people with similar problems. Sure enough, when we bought the new battery, the store said it shouldn't need to be charged. They threw it on the charger for about 20-30 minutes and said we were good to go. We put it on the bike and... well, that's when I put up the original post. We had Advance order another battery to replace this one. When we took it by to exchange, they tested the one from the week before and said it just needs a recharge... to which we informed them that we had charged it, and it would NOT hold a charge. They did an override and gave us the new battery. We took it home, put the acid in, and put it on the charger for about 8 hours. We let it sit for about an hour, then slapped it in the bike and fired her up, and all seems fine now.

Good to know that sometimes the simplest answer is the best. Thanks again. We'll have to look into the valve noise issue a little deeper and see what's going on there, but for the moment, we're back on the road. Thanks again. :biggrin:

[mrlmd1]

That's always the case with those batteries - glad it worked out just like I told you. It's usually something very simple and not the more exotic things that fail. These bikes are very reliable and it would be unusual for a 2001 bike to have a bad stator or regulator or other major electrical component crap out all by itself. You should go back and teach those guys at the battery store how to handle and care for what they sell and not just try to get rid of you or other customers if they don't know anything about their product. If they advised you right the first time, and you had fully charged it up first, they would have saved you some unnecessary aggravation and themselves the cost of a new battery.

[Easy Rider]

You should go back and teach those guys at the battery store how to handle and care for what they sell and not just try to get rid of you or other customers if they don't know anything about their product.

Mmmmm.....yea.....right !!

Depends on how you handle it, of course, but I can think of a couple of places where that would get you a good ass kicking. :shocked:

[Water Warrior 2]

Easy, it isn't what you say but how you say it. If you are polite, well mannered and use nice language you can call people and their mother just about anything.