I am having trouble with battery becoming weak after riding .What you think it may be? I disconnected the positive wire while running and 4wheeler went dead.This tells me its running totally off the battery .Any ideas .Please help

 

What year and what quad are you referring to?
You might have gotten lucky and not spiked the computer chip by yanking off the positive cable while running. I wouldnt try it again. Taking the positve cable off isnt telling you the quad is running off the battery. The ignition and the chip need voltage in a closed loop to provide spark, by taking off the cable you broke the loop.
The correct way to check to see if the battery is being charged, is with a voltmeter.
Hook it up accross the battery terminals, and with the key off, note the voltage. This is the static charge, and should be around 12.3 volts or higher. Leave the voltmeter hooked up and start the motor. At an idle, with no lights on, it might read higher than that static charge. Now turn the lights on...the voltage will probably drop by a bit. Now slowly rev the motor, until it hits about 5000 rpm. The voltage should rise with the rpm, until it peaks about 15. volts.
If it acts like this, then its ok. If the voltage doesnt increase with rpm, you got a problem. First thing to check, is the connections between the battery and the cables, clean and shiney and tight? If they are corroded and crusty, that could very well be the problem.
Next thing to check, is to have the battery load tested. Any auto parts store should be able to do this for free.

 

Thanks for replying I will do what you said and try this.Believe me I wont try disconnecting the battery while running again .I need no added expenses on this thing . I was going on what someone had told me to try . I really didnt think that was really a way to try but almost willing to try anything to solve this. you seem to know what you are talking about. Oh and my quad is a utility Suzuki 2003 Eiger

 

I was thinking the exact same thing when I started reading this post (About disconnecting batt) Are you recharging with battery charger? If so use one that's made for motorcyle batteries, or only use on trickle charge. Whatever you do, never ever use the high amperage start feature found on a lot of battery chargers when hooked to your quad. Remember also that with your meter you may read a "surface charge" after you've charged and think it's good that's why you need to have it load tested as hondabuster said. Also I would check your all your wiring to make sure you don't have a short somewhere.

 

yes i always tricle charge it . I was going to take it out of town the other day so i charged the batteries.Yes I have a backup .Lol Funny thing ,the battery on my quad didnt need charging as long as battery not being used. Masybe its ok How do u check wiring ,you was talking about

 

find a schematic, then isolate sections of wire by disconnecting connectors (just don't go cutting wires to test, makes for a mess and a place for problems down the road) and use a meter to check for shorts to ground. Also, you hadn't mentioned you had a spare battery. If you hooked this one up also you probably wouldn't be able to charge both. When you hook up batteries in parrallel you get double the amp/hr, but also need double the charging capabilities. If you had hooked them up in series you'd have the same amp/hr still but you'd have 24 volts. If you did that you may have cooked something.
Here's the order in which I would do things:
First- Disconnect both batteries charge them both on trickle charger. Hook up only one battery at a time. Try first battery, if it doesn't stay charged try the other one.
(If neither work have them load tested)

Second- You should be able to find what the resistance of the charging coil should be in a shop manual. Disconnect the wiring harness to it then check resistance.
On my brother's old lt the lighting coil was cooked because previous owner hooked up too big a lighting load. You'd get similar effect if you hooked up too big of a battery
load. If you want to do that you can get ricky stator coils and install them yourself (as I did for my brother's lt) or you can buy a ricky stator stator assembly pre-built
then all you have to do is change it out. At this point though don't buy the coils/stator until you have this situation resolved.

Third- If everything else has checked out then check for shorts.