Lights and gauge acting weird after installing new battery

Hello Everyone,

I just installed a new battery for my 1982 750 Yamaha Maxim. I've noticed that my lights will have an intermittant problem of where both turn signals will stay on frozen.

Also, the headlight will not go on when the turn signals are on and frozen. Additionally, I just noticed that when I squeeze the breaks when I'm sitting still that it will cause the RPM gauge to read nothing.

It also has cycled through the system check multiple times than normal.

The problem seems to be intermittant. The bike starts and runs great. This problem doesn't seem to affect the break lights.

I've checked all the fuses and they are all still in tact.

I didn't have any of these problems with my old crappy battery, it literally happened after I put in the new battery. I do have a battery warning indicator, but this has always been the case even with the old battery, and there never were any light/ gauge issues. The original owner told me that the battery indicator would always be on because the aftermarket batteries for the bike aren't recognized as the original battery for the Yamaha.

Any ideas on how to fix / troubleshoot this problem?

 

Are your battery cables brittle or corroded? Maybe by moving the cables around for the battery change, you could have loosened something or caused the ground connection to fail?

 

Re: Lights and gauge acting weird after installing new batte

If they end up being brittle or corroded, would the next step simply be to replace the battery cables? Is this hard to do on the 1982 750 Yamaha Maxim?

 

It's not too hard to test in theory. Just swap it out with a suitable wire and see. (In practice, though, ask someone else... has the potential to be a headache.)

Depends on where the failure is--if it's the wire, sure, replace the wire. If it's just corrosion on the connectors, you should be able to polish the corrosion off and get good contact again.