Got the Yellow Beast on the road again. Waiting for an "O" ring to seal the front brake fluid reservoir from the body of the hand brake piston assembly.

Lashed out and invested in a Motobatt Yellow AGM battery the other day (Mainly because it matches the colour of the Beast...just joking!). Decided to measure the current drawn by the bike. Disconnected the earthy (-ve) side of the battery, connected my trusty AVO8 meter in series and did some measurements for future reference.

Every thing off (clock only):  750mA. (Bit high, I thought, but CMOS technology was not in that much vogue 26 years ago)
IGN ON (Only):  1.25A
Parking light only (First position in the RHS slider switch):  2.5A
Low Beam only:  7.0A
High Beam only:  7.5A

Fitted 2 x 30A relays to supply the headlights. In hindsight, a bit of an over kill, but they work.

May be handy for somebody out there in K-land.

Cheers, Rickmeister.

Wow 750mA is a bit high I usually get around 3-4mA with just the clock. That will kill the battery.
I know you were taking the ABS off but is it still on the bike. I ask because I have seen ABS control units cause a big current loss.

All the ABS gear, the computer, relays, sensors, brake lines are removed. I cut the umbilicus from the computer near the relay box, and made sure that there was no chance of shorts when I taped it all up.

I'll go up and measure it again. What else could there be drawing this current, with everything switched off?

If worse comes to worse, I'll unplug the instrument cluster and see what happens...

3/4 Amp is a lot.  That looks like field current for the alternator .....

Hey Uli
Good point by Beamer Bill. Try pulling the alternator plug out then the fuses one by one

Checked it again just now. The AVO has a 10A max range, going down to 50uA. Don't know what happened before, but now the standing load, with everything switched off is now 0.75mA. Checked that again with a Fluke (Max. 2A range) and it measured 0.78mA, which I now believe to be correct. Pulled the 3rd fuse from the top "Uhr" (Which I believe is "Clock", in the language of the Fatherland), and the current dropped to zero.

This was measured with the EFI computer disconnected (to get access to the batt.) Don't know if this would make any difference.

Also, using the AVO on 10A DC, the first position of the IGN key switch showed 0.56A, which I think didn't happen before. Then with the IGN in its fully CW pos'n, 2.8A was recorded.

RHS light slider switch, 1st pos'n: 4.0A
RHS light slider switch, 2nd pos'n, (lo beam): 8.5A this time.
High beam: 8.8A.

So, I might put it down to a dodgy AVO, no longer my trusty AVO (it's probably 20 years older than the K bike!) but they've always had a good reputation for being a v.solid and reliable meter, albeit an analogue rather than digi.

Who knows?

Rickmeister.

just a question uli

have you done any work to the ignition switch ?

possibly a short ...bridge in there that may have cleared after being moved ?  a good flush out of the switch might help  ...I wouldn't discount the avo as faulty ...yet