Hiya, I'm new here :D Bought a 94' Ninja 250 at the beginning of February and it was running fine until one fateful day when he (yes I said He) wouldn't start up so well. I did realize that there probably wasn't enough fuel in there etc... and then after trying to start it I either flooded it or drained the battery.

I charged the battery with my battery tender... filled up the gas tank with a couple of gallons with some seafoam and it still would not start. It sounded like it was cranking but not quite enough spark. So my friends recommended that I check the spark plugs.

Now mind you I have little to no experience with spark plugs so I read a lot on the forums of how to do it. Got the first one off... tested it and put it back on with the anti-seize. Took off the other plug... couldn't see too well if it was sparking or not so I moved it around and it was touching one of the screws sticking out from the top of the engine, thought no big deal that it was touching since it was metal. WELL, I pressed the starter button and I heard it turn once and then the whole electrical system went out.

Once again I call my friends and search the forums and they all tell me its a blown fuse. I checked the fuse box and they all looked fine. I checked the "starter solenoid" fuse too and it seems to be fine. Is it possible I somehow blew up the starter solenoid without actually doing anything to the fuse?

Ugh so frustrating :(

Thanks for any help!

-L

Did you smell any smoke when the electrical system whent out? If so, one of your wires may have melted in half. Just an idea. Also check the battery to make sure it still has a charge.

I hope this helps. :confused:

did you check the 30A main fuse?

http://faq.ninja250.org/images/a/a7/Ninja_250_Start_%26_Ignition_Schematic.pdf

Did you smell any smoke when the electrical system whent out? If so, one of your wires may have melted in half. Just an idea. Also check the battery to make sure it still has a charge.

I hope this helps. :confused:

First off... KKim if that's the fuse in the starter solenoid then yes I checked that fuse. It was a 30A fuse and it looked fine.

Snake, no smoke or anything, I did check all the wiring just to make sure and everything looks ok. I DID however take your advice and checked to see if the battery needed to be charged again with the tender but it wouldn't take so I think the battery is bad or something. I suspected the battery before doin all this spark plug thing but I noticed someone else on a different forum who bought a battery even though everyone told him to check the plugs first and he ended up wasting his money.

So I'm gonna go get a new battery and I probably should change the spark plugs now that I got the tank off.

Thanks for the help!

-L

First off - A battery tender is not a charger, it will not charge up a dead battery. It's meant to maintain a charged battery. Do you mean a battery tender, or a real battery charger?
Secondly - you are not getting good advice. "It sounded like it was cranking but not enough spark"? What sounds do spark plugs make? There is no way to say there is not enough spark from what you did. If a battery is weak, the bike may crank over slowly, and there may not be enough juice (amps) for the ignition system to work properly. This is a fault of the battery, not the spark plugs.
Before buying a new battery, jump the bike from a good 12V battery. like from a car, and see if it starts. Caution - DO NOT have the car engine running when you do this, the alternator output of the car will fry all the electrics on a bike. If the bike starts then the problem was your battery being dead..
Charge it up on a decent charger, 2 amps only for 6-8 hrs, then have it load tested by any battery store, Walmart, Autozone type places. If it's bad, get a new one. If you buy an AGM sealed battery, it MUST be fully charged up first before put into first use or it will never hold a full charge. It will start the bike a few times and then crap out. Be warned.
How much Seafoam did you put in the gas? High dosages over the recommended 1 oz/gal fuel can also make the bike hard to start and run like crap.
How did you check the plugs? And avoid getting electrocuted in the process?
This is a case of getting bad advice and screwing with something that ain't broke by someone who doesn't know how to do it. And it pays to do one thing at a time instead of jumping all over the place. Sorry.
And I assume you had it on full choke when you tried to start it? Sometimes the bike will never start, especially if it's cold, without choking it.

If the fuses are fine, get an actual charger, not a tender, as the guys have said. This sounds very similar to my experience, it sounds like it's trying to start - and there you just killed what was left of the juice in the battery. just my 2 cents =)

First off - A battery tender is not a charger, it will not charge up a dead battery. It's meant to maintain a charged battery. Do you mean a battery tender, or a real battery charger?
Secondly - you are not getting good advice. "It sounded like it was cranking but not enough spark"? What sounds do spark plugs make? There is no way to say there is not enough spark from what you did. If a battery is weak, the bike may crank over slowly, and there may not be enough juice (amps) for the ignition system to work properly. This is a fault of the battery, not the spark plugs.
Before buying a new battery, jump the bike from a good 12V battery. like from a car, and see if it starts. Caution - DO NOT have the car engine running when you do this, the alternator output of the car will fry all the electrics on a bike. If the bike starts then the problem was your battery being dead..
Charge it up on a decent charger, 2 amps only for 6-8 hrs, then have it load tested by any battery store, Walmart, Autozone type places. If it's bad, get a new one. If you buy an AGM sealed battery, it MUST be fully charged up first before put into first use or it will never hold a full charge. It will start the bike a few times and then crap out. Be warned.
How much Seafoam did you put in the gas? High dosages over the recommended 1 oz/gal fuel can also make the bike hard to start and run like crap.
How did you check the plugs? And avoid getting electrocuted in the process?
This is a case of getting bad advice and screwing with something that ain't broke by someone who doesn't know how to do it. And it pays to do one thing at a time instead of jumping all over the place. Sorry.
And I assume you had it on full choke when you tried to start it? Sometimes the bike will never start, especially if it's cold, without choking it.

Mrlmd- You are right I was trying to do all this with a battery tender, not a charger. Secondly... I'm sorry if my description of how the bike started was incorrect. The advice that I got, and followed, was what every single forum and person told me to do: Charge the battery, check the spark plugs. I charged up the battery with my tender, which you are telling me now is not adequate enough and sure enough my bike still did not start.

So my next thought was checking the spark plugs. How did I check them? I put them in the wiring unit, set them on the engine, turned on the ignition, pressed the starter button. How did I avoid getting electrocuted? Pretty easily.

Seafoam, I put 2 capfuls in with 2.5 gallons of fuel. So no overdose there. I can read directions.

Yes I did use choke. Yes I know how to use choke...

Look I appreciate the advice about the battery and all but you are being borderline rude in your response. I'm not incompetent and I'd appreciate it much more if you would just stick to helpful advice instead of dismissing me as just "screwing around".

Prior to this bike I've owned my SV 650 for almost 4 years now and I've done lots of work on that bike with and without help and I plan on doing the same for my Ninja because I enjoy it.

Rude? Silly me, I thought we were trying to help, good luck with your bike.

no Demp, I wasn't referring to you, just mrlmd.

SS- yeah, maybe I came off a little too strong, but you were not trying to solve a problem in a logical way. You were jumping around from one area to another and not working it through systematically. And your own description, in your own words, "Took off the other plug... couldn't see too well if it was sparking or not so I moved it around and it was touching one of the screws sticking out from the top of the engine, thought no big deal that it was touching since it was metal", sounds like you are a little inexperienced and possibly could have gotten seriously hurt. Nobody wants that. And you should know the difference between a battery tender and a charger, so my assessment is not entirely wrong.
Next time, don't ask your friends for advice, come here first.

Yes, you are right I am inexperienced at changing spark plugs, electrical stuff in general. Normally I'd get help from someone who has experience but I got tired of waiting and decided to read up about it and do it on my own. I guess I should wait longer next time... :p

The battery stuff, my understanding is that the battery tender is essentially a trickle charger right? I assumed that what it was doing was charging my battery but at a slower rate... could you explain to me more about the difference between the battery tender and a charger? I know you already said the battery tender won't charge a dead battery,its for maintenance, but why is that?

Bought a 94' Ninja 250 at the beginning of February and it was running fine until one fateful day when he (yes I said He) wouldn't start up so well.

There is your problem. Your bike has gender confusion. Anything you put something into is a she. You put gas, time, money into your motorcycle so it is a SHE.

Put a new battery into HER and see how it goes.

Laura, I do have to say, it's difficult to help others over the internet. We know nothing of the experience level of the person doing the job or asking the questions and we have no first hand knowledge of the actual condition of the bike.

I'm not taking sides with mrlmd, but rather letting you know we all try to help on this forum and do not intentionally put anyone down if they are having problems.

To survive on any forum, grow a bit thicker skin and cultivate a sense of humor... it helps. :)

A battery Charger for the size of the batteries on our bikes will put out 2 amps and our batteries should not be charged at a rate higher than that or they may be damaged. An inexpensive one will just keep doing that, so after say 6-10hrs for a dead battery, it should be disconnected or the battery may get overcharged and boil. A more expensive model may sense state of charge and shut itself off or go into maintenance mode, most don't (we're all cheap).
Depending on who makes them, and I don't know what you have, a battery TENDER may be just a trickle charger, putting out 0.5-0.8 amps, and is meant to keep the battery topped up, can be left on much longer without damaging the battery because the charge is so small. It replaces the amount the battery self-discharges over time to keep it topped up. For a severely discharged battery, it may never charge it up fully because it's not strong enough.
There are some battery charger/tender (sometimes called maintainer) combinations that for our size batteries start out with 1.25 amps output and have a microprocessor that senses battery status and will then drop down to a 0.5 A output to maintain the battery for extended periods. I don't know what you have, but I would bet your battery never got charged up to its' capacity so you had a problem right there.
The only way to see if a battery is any good is to charge it fully and have it load tested.
By the way a reading of 12.8V is a fully charged battery. 11.4 is 0%charged. See below:
From Deltran --
Lead acid batteries are made up of cells. Each cell is approximately 2 volts, so a 12-volt battery has 6 individual cells. It turns out that a fully charged 2-volt cell has a voltage of approximately 2.15 volts. Oddly enough, a fully discharged 2-volt cell has a voltage of 1.9 volts. That’s only a difference of 0.25 volts on each cell from fully charged to fully discharged. So a 12-volt battery will measure at about 12.9 volts when it’s fully charged and about 11.4 volts when it is fully discharged. That’s a total of 1.5 volts that represents the full range of charge on a 12-volt battery. To make a good guess at how much charge your battery has left, you can assign a percentage of charge remaining that is directly proportional to the battery voltage. Let’s see how we can do that. If the battery voltage is 12.15 volts, how much charge is left? Beginning with 11.4 volts representing no charge or 0% charge available, subtract 11.4 volts from the voltage that you read. So 12.15 – 11.4 = 0.75 volts. Since there are only 1.5 volts above 11.4 volts that represents the full range of charge, we can divide the difference that we just calculated by 1.5 volts to get the percentage of charge remaining. 0.75 volts / 1.5 volts = 0.5 or when expressed as a percentage, multiply by 100 and get 50%

If the plugs look OK, clean them off, check the gap, put them back. Either charge up the battery or jump it from a non-running car, it should start.
If you put in new plugs, make sure you or someone else checks the gap.
And like I have said many times before, if you battery is dead and won't pass a load test and you buy a new sealed AGM, make sure you charge it fully first, regardless of what the guy in the battery store tells you, or it will not last more than a few starts and you have the problem all over again. I personally went through 3 new batteries until I contacted the manufacturers directly and was told this by more than one battery company, and the dealer had no clue.
Let us know how it turns out so we (or I) can rag on you for something else.:);):cheers:

Just a clarification on the Battery Tender. The Battery Tender name is a brand name. The technical term for a device that helps keep a battery in good condition is called a Battery Maintainer.

Second, people are bashing her for having a Battery Tender. In actuality, there are quite a few products that the company sells. The Battery Tender Jr. is only a maintainer, while a Battery Tender Plus is a maintainer and a charger. Which one do you have, Laura?

From what I read, it definitely sounds like your main fuse is blown...do you have a multimeter? If you do, you can MAKE SURE that the fuse is blown by checking its resistance. When you touch both sides of the fuse and it still shows an infinite resistance, the fuse is blown. Otherwise, it is working. Sometimes, a fuse may not look blown but it could be. Just a thought.

OK OK! Thank you mrlmd for informing me about all this, I genuinely didn't know the difference so now I do :D

So here's what happened, I did buy a new battery and as it turns out the 95'+ year models use the sealed... anything before then and you are supposed to get unsealed battery. The man at the store said that ince I have a 94' I need to get the unsealed. When I swapped the batteries, its pretty cool cause you can see the liquid inside and as it turns out the old battery was completely dry! So looks like the battery was the culprit all along, and now I know how to check for that. I was just assuming all along though that the other battery was fully charged because my tender showed that it was, so when the whole bike zapped out and the fuses all looked fine I freaked and thought I did something seriously wrong to the bike.

This morning I put in the new battery (the store I bought it from charged it) and also the new spark plugs with some anti-seize... put everything together again and YAY she started up! Rode her around for a bit and everything was easy peasy.

So thank you thank you to all the advice (and scoldings), please just keep in mind I was embarrassed about even posting. Prior to this I had no idea where the spark plugs even were, I'm not used to dealing with the electrical stuff with bikes. I've relied too much on boyfriends(and ex's) to do all my bike maintenance stuff in the past and I'm trying to do most of my own work now. And now I also know a lot more about batteries too :P

I feel just a bit more independent now guys... thanks :)

Just a clarification on the Battery Tender. The Battery Tender name is a brand name. The technical term for a device that helps keep a battery in good condition is called a Battery Maintainer.

Second, people are bashing her for having a Battery Tender. In actuality, there are quite a few products that the company sells. The Battery Tender Jr. is only a maintainer, while a Battery Tender Plus is a maintainer and a charger. Which one do you have, Laura?

From what I read, it definitely sounds like your main fuse is blown...do you have a multimeter? If you do, you can MAKE SURE that the fuse is blown by checking its resistance. When you touch both sides of the fuse and it still shows an infinite resistance, the fuse is blown. Otherwise, it is working. Sometimes, a fuse may not look blown but it could be. Just a thought.

I have a Battery Tender Jr.

There is your problem. Your bike has gender confusion. Anything you put something into is a she. You put gas, time, money into your motorcycle so it is a SHE.

Put a new battery into HER and see how it goes.

You're right... SHE is kinda b*tchy... so its a she... :thumbup:

Congrats, Laura. :thumbup:

Nothing better than the feeling you get fixing a problem on the bike on your own. Good job.

welcome to the forum. :)

I don't know why you would have to get an older type lead acid battery instead of a newer sealed AGM, but that's OK. Just one more thing you have to add to your maintenance list.
Every month or so, especially in the hot weather, you have to check the fluid level in each of the 6 cells in the battery and top it up as necessary, ideally with distilled water but in a pinch you can use any really clean water with no additives or anything in it. Don't let the level of liquid in the battery drop below the lead plates you see or the battery's life will be shortened. You may be able to see the fluid level without removing the battery if the case is translucent, otherwise remove the caps or plate over the cells and look inside. You don't have to remove the battery to do this. Just fill up as needed using a bulb syringe, like a turkey baster thing (I assume you know what that is).
Anyway, welcome back to the world of the riding, stay upright, be safe, ask questions, glad you got it fixed.
By the way, where is Simi Valley? North of LA?

Laura, (nice name--have daughter Laura) You should never feel self-conscious about asking questions on this forum. Most everybody will tell you that the dumbest question is the one you didn`t ask. Congrats on fixing the electrical problem--they are particularly frustrating and can put the best mechaic on a shrink`s couch.:D:D:D