Juice going to Tach / Speedo When Key Is Off! Help

[kshapiro]

Towards the end of the summer my "04 Roadster was getting harder to start every time I made a gas stop. Battery is fine and charging system is fine. No clues. Saturday I go to fill up 60 miles form home. When I go to start her there's a nasty noise in the starter area and nothing after that. Every half hour or so there'd be enough battery to light up the idiot lights, but nothing more than a single click when I hit the starter button. In fact, sometime the idiot lights would only light if I smacked the starter button / idiot light cluster.

BTW...Progressive's Road Side Assistance took 8 hours to get me a tow home. Seems their provider, Cross Country, thinks Lancaster, PA is in the middle of nowhere. They actually told me, "If it were a car..."

Anyway, I just went out to see if I could find something obvious. Well...I did. When the key is off, the speedo and tach are getting juice and the needles are jumping a little...there's a whirring sound as well. When I trn the key on, the jumping and noise goes away. My electro-moronic mind tells me there's a short sending juice (and draining my battery) when the bike is off. Then how come it drained my battery while riding?

Any ideas are great;y appreciated.
Ken

[kshapiro]

Never ceases to amaze me. Cleaned the cable that runs from the solenoid to the battery (wasn't even corroded looking at all), and the beast is back to normal! Coated it with some dielectric grease too.
Ken

Originally Posted by kshapiro

Towards the end of the summer my "04 Roadster was getting harder to start every time I made a gas stop. Battery is fine and charging system is fine. No clues. Saturday I go to fill up 60 miles form home. When I go to start her there's a nasty noise in the starter area and nothing after that. Every half hour or so there'd be enough battery to light up the idiot lights, but nothing more than a single click when I hit the starter button. In fact, sometime the idiot lights would only light if I smacked the starter button / idiot light cluster.

BTW...Progressive's Road Side Assistance took 8 hours to get me a tow home. Seems their provider, Cross Country, thinks Lancaster, PA is in the middle of nowhere. They actually told me, "If it were a car..."

Anyway, I just went out to see if I could find something obvious. Well...I did. When the key is off, the speedo and tach are getting juice and the needles are jumping a little...there's a whirring sound as well. When I trn the key on, the jumping and noise goes away. My electro-moronic mind tells me there's a short sending juice (and draining my battery) when the bike is off. Then how come it drained my battery while riding?

Any ideas are great;y appreciated.
Ken