Serious and confusing electrical problem

What happened:

It was a hot day 106 degrees outside. Went for a long ride on my WR250R, Ran perfectly, started no problem. After about an hour of riding in that heat, I stopped at a place to grab a bite to eat. So I turned off my bike and proceeded to do eat. Came back and my bike wouldn't start. It had power on, but when you would try to start it, the power would cut off and all you would hear clicking from what I think was the starter solenoid. Not a big deal just seemed like a dead battery. So I proceeded to bump start the bike(totally tell I came from carbureted bikes). It took a few tries, but it did start again! Or so I thought. It ran rough, and didn't really like to idle. So I reved it up and tried to get the RPMs going to maybe charge the battery faster. Took it down the road, it had no power at all. Wouldn't go over 10 MPH before the engine light came on and the bike cut off for good. Engine CODE 68 came up. So I looked it up and it's an electrical problem, so it being a FI bike, I towed it home.

Since then:

1. When I bought the bike I was told the battery was new, and it was. I have the receipt for it. So I thought went on to check the battery and charging system.
2. I jump started the bike with my car and bam, it ran perfectly. So electrical issues at all. So it seemed.
3. So I thought OK, maybe my battery is bad. Did some multimeter testing, it wouldn't hold a charge. 11.4 volts or less no matter how long I tried to charge it. There was no way that that battery could run  the bike.
4. So I bought a new battery from O'Reilly's Auto Parts. Went home and put it in the bike. Same problem. Bike couldn't run off it's own power. Just clicks and has electrical problems like before.
5. So I jump start the bike with my car. Starts no problem on my car battery! Remove the jumper cables and bike want's to die again and does.
6. So now I think, ok it's definitely a charging problem. So I remove the NEW motorcycle battery and do a volts test on it. Couldn't hold no more than 11.4 volts no matter how long I charged it with my car!
7. Only hook the bike up to my car with jumper cables, with no battery on the bike and it runs perfect like before. Now I start testing the charging system. My car battery sat at 12.6 volts with the bike off. And with the bike running it would pump out 14.0 volts at idle! Didn't seem like a charging problem at all!
8. Then I'm like, well fuck, O'Rielly's sold me another bad battery, the battery is the only thing that seems to be the problem, so I get a new one from them with it's warranty.
9. Happy enough to think I figured it out finally, no I didn't. I take the SECOND new battery home and throw it on the bike. WOULDNT START THE BIKE AGAIN. Thinking OK, Jump start it and OK this is a good battery now. Still DIES out when you remove the jumper cables and WILL ONLY RUN OFF MY CAR BATTERY. It runs perfect on off my car, but that's it!

Where do I go from here, I've never have had problems diagnosing electrical problems on Motors. I used to work at a Yamaha boat dealership and fix all sorts of EFI Boat motors day in and day out!

NOTES:

- The Reg/Rec get's very hot, I couldn't touch it or hold my hand on it. (Maybe the culprit even though it charges my car battery fine? Or maybe the Stator?)
   Remember it was 106 degrees out. Idk how hot those are supposed to get.
- Seems like every battery I put into the bike, the bike it destroys it. Or O'Reilly's only sells bad batteries? None that they give me hold a charge it seems. I'm not sure if it's them or my bike breaking them or what
- That Stator HAS had the recall fixed less than a year ago. Comfirmed by VIN number with Yamaha
- Stock everything on the engine!


This bike has been awesome for the past 9000 miles, Not sure what's going on!

Help please!
I will keep all my findings and update you guys daily. I couldn't find anything else about this issue on the internet.

Sounds like the RR and/or the Stator took a dump.  Get a manual o check the stator.  You can check the RR easy enough with the bike running....put a voltmeter set to DC and put the leads on the battery.  Voltage should be in the neighborhood of 14-14.5 volts.  If you are seeing voltages higher then 14.5 it will kill the battery in time. If you are seeing voltages in the lower 13's it will not be enough to keep the battery in good shape either. Sometimes if the stator takes a dump it will take the RR with it.  Do your checks first and start there.....

I downloaded the manual the other day and did the test for the stator, I couldn't seem to get any resistance between any of the white wires, but I may have been doing something wrong. Also note that on my car battery the stator and the RR seemed to do their jobs just fine. 12.6 when the bike was off. And 14.0 when the bike was running at idle. I've ordered a new RR just to remove that from the equation and later today I'm going to try the Stator tests again and remove the stator and inspect it so see if it's shorting out or burned up or something. I do agree that it's the charging system. Is just doesn't make sence to me

I don't know how many more batteries I can burn up before O'Reilly's drops me as a customer

I would not buy another RR quite yet as it seems that is ok based on your readings. I would suspect the Stator....you need to check it. Has the recall been done on this bike? If not you can get that changed free of charge!

+1 on checking to see if the stator recall has been done.

Also check the electrical connections between the stator, R/R, and the battery. Make sure none of these are fried.

There is also that pesky connector behind the radiator that may come undone but your symptoms don't seem to line up with that issue.

In the notes, I put that the Stator Recall was performed less than a year ago. Yamaha said they won't replace it again. But anyway I'm going outside right now to pull the Stator off and take a look. I'll add pictures if necessary

So I removed the stator. It's not burnt or anything. It looks good to me but I'm not sure about my readings. Take a look. I looked in the service manual and is says it should be 0.168 - 0.252 Ohms. Any help is appropriated!

Testing resistance White 1 With White 2 - 0.04 ohms

Testing resistance White 1 with White 3 - 0.04 ohms

0.04 ohms seems shortcutted to me equal as no resistance
further 0.168 - 0.252 Ohms is are values that low i.m.o. anything close will be good
for that 3 digit accurate readings you need a calibrated labratory tool
try an inch of copper wire for reference will probably also read 0.01 to 0.04 ohms, that piece of copper will have absolute zero for shure.

Did some measuring on my EXC stator, its far out of specs, also that 0.200 ohms specs, but runs perfect, occured just other fuel fix.

A few years ago my brother was trying to diagnose an electrical issue on his Ninja 650.

He checked the resistance across the stator leads with his Radio Shack multimeter and it checked out good. So he replaced the R/R and still had the same issue.

He brought the bike into a shop and they checked the stator and found it was bad - they used an expensive calibrated meter which gave a precise resistance reading at those low levels. They replaced the stator and everything was good.

Later the owner of the shop said that if he needed to check out any of his other bikes for issues like that he would gladly lend him the right equipment provided he bought the parts, if needed, from him.

Agree, dont mess beyond your skills

I've never have has issues diagnosing electrical problems, cars or boats. This situation just didn't make very much sense to me and was very different so I came here to see what other owners had to say about it, or if they've experienced the same problem. I can't really take it to a shop. Labor is way to expensive for trying to live off a military paycheck. It'll be probably $400 at least. It's cheaper for me to just replace both the stator and RR myself, refill the oil, and swap the filter and call it a day. Also being military and moving across the country all the time I don't have know any good shops with mechanics that'll let me use their tools. Thanks though for your replies guys. It probably is the stator despite how new it is and how clean it looks, even after the recall

Let us know the results please!  This one has me very curious although I think the stator is the culprit.....

The new stator and RR are on their way, also got another new battery because all the previous one I've used, the bike shorts them out and makes them go bad. Not sure why, stator might be shorting them out. Anyway, expect an update sometime next week.

New Stator and RR put in today. No difference. Bike won't start on it's own. Only when I jump it with my car. Starter soldinoid only clicks when I try to start it. When I get it to run with the car battery, it only puts out 8Volts when running...serious problem. Something is short circuiting. Please help. It's not a charging system problem

Buck1222 wrote:

New Stator and RR put in today. No difference. Bike won't start on it's own. Only when I jump it with my car. Starter soldinoid only clicks when I try to start it. When I get it to run with the car battery, it only puts out 8Volts when running...serious problem. Something is short circuiting. Please help. It's not a charging system problem

Time to start checking wire harnesses for any wires that may be rubbed through etc. I am at a loss on this one....

Is the starter relay clicking when the bike battery is fully charged? If so, the solenoid may be bad. Put a voltmeter on the battery when you hit the starter...what does the voltage read? It should really not go below 10 volts.

CRFan1 wrote:

Buck1222 wrote:

New Stator and RR put in today. No difference. Bike won't start on it's own. Only when I jump it with my car. Starter soldinoid only clicks when I try to start it. When I get it to run with the car battery, it only puts out 8Volts when running...serious problem. Something is short circuiting. Please help. It's not a charging system problem

Time to start checking wire harnesses for any wires that may be rubbed through etc.  I am at a loss on this one....

Is the starter relay clicking when the bike battery is fully charged?  If so, the solenoid may be bad. Put a voltmeter on the battery when you hit the starter...what does the voltage read?   It should really not go below 10 volts.

FIXED =...Well, when the new Stator and R/R didn't fix the issue, so I put the old ones back in. The stock OEM ones because I feel safer that way. They old stuff did charge and work correctly on my car battery. And well the motorcycle battery was the problem the entire time(why there was so many electrical problems and stuff, low volts, etc). Bad batteries can do some weird things. But yeah, I tried 3 different batteries from O'reilly's before moving on to the charging system. Turns out, O'reilly's seems to only sells bad/used batteries. The ones they gave me looked used, and they probably sit on their shelves for a long time anyway, as well as most of them were dead when I got them so I had to charge them and most wouldn't even hold an initial charge well. I swapped them out at multiple O'reilly's locations, so it wasn't just one store's problem, maybe their whole hub. Not sure if it's because of their shit CCA batteries or what, but I bought an Autozone battery and it made the bike fire right up like their was never any issues.

So if you ever have a code 46 and/or also an Err_01, CHECK YOUR BATTERY AND BUY A REPUTABLE BATTERY BRAND. Wr250's don't like bad batteries or low volts. EFI needs lot's of power. I didn't think it would take 4 batteries to get a good one. Didn't help the troubleshooting process....

Thanks for all your help guys, bike is running and charging(14v) perfectly now with a good battery(12.7v)

Any questions, just ask me, hopefully this helps people down the road. There wasn't very much on this fault on the internet.

Holy cow I am glad that it was as simple as that......ALWAYS check the battery first and use a good brand (aka Yuasa or equivalent). I had assumed you did that already, lol. Sorry to lead you in the wrong direction but the chances of getting several bad batteries in a row seemed astronomical to me.

Go ride and have fun :)

CRFan1 wrote:

Holy cow I am glad that it was as simple as that......ALWAYS check the battery first and use a good brand (aka Yuasa or equivalent).  I had assumed you did that already, lol.  Sorry to lead you in the wrong direction but the chances of getting several bad batteries in a row seemed astronomical to me.

Go ride and have fun :)

Yeah, I know man. The batteries really threw me off too...but I was thinking the same things you were. Anyway, just got the fuel programmer, did the airbox mod, and removed AIS. Can't wait to ride again later today

Buck1222 wrote:

CRFan1 wrote:

Holy cow I am glad that it was as simple as that......ALWAYS check the battery first and use a good brand (aka Yuasa or equivalent).  I had assumed you did that already, lol.  Sorry to lead you in the wrong direction but the chances of getting several bad batteries in a row seemed astronomical to me.

Go ride and have fun :)

Yeah, I know man. The batteries really threw me off too...but I was thinking the same things you were. Anyway, just got the fuel programmer, did the airbox mod, and removed AIS. Can't wait to ride again later today

Excellent have fun!!

Bike ran perfectly for a day, but now has much bigger problems. The flywheel is ruined, found metal shavings inside stator cover/oil, a ball of metal and a scored up ruined stator. Not sure how it happened, or if it's because of a second problem. Maybe somehow foreign metal found it's way in there the case before I closed it up? Melted stator? The flywheel is scored pretty good too...any ideas? I will post pictures when I tear it apart

This thread was a perfect fit for my situation recently. I was riding in the Trinity-Shasta National Forest when my bike would not start after a lunch stop. The bike had been running perfectly for the prior 5 days while doing an extended self supported ride with a buddy. I bump started it, but it ran very poorly. Fortunately I was in a place with good cell service. Also fortunate was the fact that we stopped trying to limp my bike where there happened to be an RV parked. The road we were on is paved, but very few cars travel along it. The guy in the RV had a charger, but it would not charge the battery. The charger was fairly automatic, so it detected the voltage going to 14.9V with very little current so it would turn off. I also noticed that the regulator was getting hot. We decided that it was the battery and my friend left on a 5 hour journey to O'Reilly's.

After he left I started looking for info on this type of failure and found this post. I had every symptom of the OP. When I got to the part about O'Reilly batteries, I texted my buddy to have them test the new battery! When he got back the bike ran perfectly again with the new battery.

I'm new to the WR and trail riding, but I have never seen a battery die without any warning. Why do they die so suddenly?

Chris

Everything works untill it doesnt.

Many factors to make a battery fail too soon.