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Vexing Starter
Been struggling with a starting problem for a week now so decided to join the forum and ask for some help here. I've got a '01 Fatboy with a 103" upgrade without compression releasers. It's always been a bit of a challenge to start when cold, but this Spring I haven't been able to get her to fire up at all. Can't really even get the engine to turn over. Thinking it may have been a combination of cold weather and compression I pulled the plugs and tried it that way. Turns over, but definitely still a struggle. The battery was new last fall and has been inside on a trickle charger all Winter. I've tried all combos of the bike battery and jumpered with my truck battery with same result. The headlamp lights full as well. So, I don't think it's a "dead battery" issue. One additional piece of info here... With the jumper cables attached, with or without the bike battery in the circuit, the cables get very hot pretty quickly once you try to start the bike. So, there seems to be a lot of current going somewhere.
If I take the starter switch and relay out of the circuit by jumpering the positive terminal of the battery to the solenoid terminal I get the same result... very weak cranking, not nearly enough to get the bike to fire. When I took some multimeter readings I saw some interesting results. With either battery I read nearly 13V. With the positive multimeter lead attached to the solenoid terminal and that terminal either jumpered or when actually using the starter circuit I'm only reading about 2.5V. That doesn't seem right. The combo of that low voltage reading and the fact that the jumper cable wires get so hot has me thinking there might be a short someplace. Is it possible to have a short in the starter itself? Any way to test for this?
I'm kinda out of ideas here so I'm open to any and all suggestions. I don't really want to pull the starter if I don't have to, but that might be where I am. Thanks in advance.
-Scott
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Linear Mode
