Thought you might find it interesting how my ES recovered from a dead battery.

This past weekend I started my ride with a dead battery. Three days dead, at least.

I dig out the manual shift lever and get the Rancher in neutral. The pull rope works fine, and starts on first pull.

Interesting though, that the ES shifter didn't work with the Rancher at idle.

Foward, reverse .. nope, nada, zip. Press either button and nothing, no familiar kerchunk and go.

It took revving the engine to get a shift out of the ES. As long as the battery was totally dead, when the Rancher idled, the ES would not shift. Rev it up, and I could move through the gears.

After riding for a while and recharging the battery, everything returned to normal.

Just in case you park your ATV with your switch still on ...

 

Greetings,

While waiting for the recall parts on my 450ES, I rode around with a dead battery for months. And it was really dead -- even after hours of riding it wouldn't start the engine. (I've actually modified the knuckle on one finger from pulling that stupid recoil starting all winter).

It didn't affect the shifting except in very cold weather. One winter day, with temperatures between 9 and 15 degrees, it was very unreliable. Difficult to get out of neutral and difficult to downshift out of higher gears. Also, the instrument pod would go into a scramble even when running.

Even after recall fix, battery wouldn't hold a charge. Replaced battery and have never had a moment of trouble since. And I swear I'll never pull that recoil rope again.

 

Parked the Rancher with the switch on, needless to say the next day the battery was dead & 8 hours were added to my hourmeter. I thought the motor had to be running to add hours, oh well. Thanks for the infor.

 

You know .. I didn't realize it at the time, but I think you're right about the hour meter running when the switch is on.

I glanced at mine and thought .. damn, I don't remember having 10 hours of extra fun on the Rancher!

 

How much power does the alternator on the Rancher put out? It seems like it should give out enough power to at least shift the ES. I wouldn't want ES personally, I like shifting manually.

 

The alt. would put out enough power to run the ES
as long as you had enough voltage to get the alt.
to do it's thing it will not generate power on it's owne.