Hello, my name is Sean and this is my first post!

I have a 2008 Foreman and I was out plowing the snow in our driveway and with no warning, the engine shutoff and the electrical stopped working.

Also a strong sulfur smell (battery related?) was emanating from my quad for about 15 to 30 seconds.

I turn the key off and back to the on position and no lights come on, and I hear no sounds. It is just dead. The fuses are all good and I saw nothing obvious that would indicate a problem.

Any thoughts as to what could be going on?

Thanks in advance.

Sean

 

I think you need to go thru everything with a Multimeter. Especially check all grounds. Murphy's Law dictates that it will be the hardest and tucked out of way, the most.

 

What is the temps there were you was plowing at?

 

About 32 deg

 

Thanks Hydrex I'll give it a shot.

 

Batteries for modern Hondas are sealed for life, if you got that "strong sulfur smell" my guess would be a dead short in the winch wires or a battery fault. Charge the battery up and check those connections, it may be prudent to disconnect the winch wires temporarily and see if the bike's electrics start working again.

 

So I took out the battery and discovered with a multimeter that it was 100% dead. I tried recharging it but it wouldn't take much of a charge at all. I'm not the original owner, but I discovered that this is the original battery - 9 years old (not bad). I purchased a brand new sealed battery and I'm going to connect that however I suspect that there may be another problem since it seems that I've been drawing down on the battery while my quad has been running, which may be why it shut off in the first place.

So based on this new info, any ideas what the problem could be? Alternator, regulator, etc?

Thanks, Sean

 

So I installed the battery, and that sucker started right up. I ran it for about 2 hours while plowing the snow and measured the battery voltage before and after. Both times it read 12.65! So hopefully nothing else is wrong. Thanks for the replies.

 

If you disconnect one lead from the battery and with ignition off, connect an ammeter between the battery and lead, you should get either no current, or at least no more than 0.02 of an amp. This checks that you haven't a slow "drain" from some component while the bike is parked up.