Put the battery back in. Run a temporary jumper wire from the negative battery terminal to a bolt head somewhere on the engine. If the bike powers up when you do that, and won't power up without the jumper in place, you have a problem with the negative battery cable.

Didn't you connect to battery negative?

Man, id get a voltmeter, under ten bucks.

There are also no hot wires in the ignition plug.

Aww, man, really? You mean it just controls ground?

chzeckmate wrote on 06/06/15 at 16:06:09:


 I connected the test light negative lead to the negative terminal and the positive lead to the positive terminal and no light.

Okay, the clip you put on the neg. terminal, did you put it on anything Other than the lead part of the battery?
I am asking again, Exactly,what did you do.

When you are wanting a ground to work out for you and you have a clip,you may need to clean up what you clip on, maybe squeeze it and wiggle it.
If you have not clieaned the ground on the motor, you should.
I'm not comfortable that the light only works with the battery out..
You said you have had this problem before...
Did you change the battery, anything, anything else you have done or someone else, anything you can tell about the history.

I put the positive lead on the screw on the terminal, the terminal, itself, and the cable connector. I put the negative on numerous bolt heads. I did clean the bolt heads first

justin_o_guy2 wrote on 06/06/15 at 18:20:40:


Here's something interesting.  I took someone's advice and tried to jump start the bike and it worked.  I'm assuming that the battery has enough juice to light my test light but not enough juice to power the bike.  I'm really confused about how two brand new batteries could go bad in an instant.  I mean both batteries were so good that the starter didn't even whine.  It would just start instantly...you'd hear the initial click of the starter and immediately the motor would begin to rumble.  What could cause a battery to go from being that strong to not being able to even dimly light the neutral light?  I've never left the bike in park.  I double check that every time.  I'm OCD about that.  I ride every day at least half an hour both ways and the revs are high enough that the charging system shouldn't struggle to put power back into the battery.  I'm really worried that I'm going to go get the battery replaced under warranty again and this will repeat itself.  

Sorry, I meant to mention that the headlight bulb is just a brighter bulb.  The wattage is the same it's just better technology, I'm getting the multimeter in the morning, and I'll be taking the battery there in the morning.