Starting trouble

[CovertHippie]

After storing my bike (A 2007 R1200GS) for 6 months on the center stand with the battery disconnected I've had trouble getting the bike to start again. I charged the battery then connected it back to the bike. I followed the instructions in the manual to open the throttle a couple times after reconnecting the battery. When trying to start the bike the first time it almost started, but on each subsequent attempt all I hear is a loud clicking sound. The EWS! warning appeared on the dash.

It seems like the battery has plenty of power, as the lights come on bright and everything seems to work.

Does anyone have any suggestions, ideas, or help for getting the bike running again?

[marc]

Clicking is usually a bad battery or bad battery connections. If your connections are good and tight and you cleaned everything before re-attaching the battery then I'd suspect a bad or not fully charged battery. Try jumping the bike from another battery. Or, if it is convenient, take the battery out of the bike and get it load tested.

The EWS comes on when the battery is low/bad, too. If it were a real EWS issue you'd not get as far as trying to turn the engine over.

[pdxrmccgs]

Clicking means bad battery. If stored six months with no
charge battery may be shot.

See owners manual for charging completely "flat" battery.

pdx

[Sit]

Maybe try a jump, but the EWS thing worries me. When my battery crapped out on me this winter in a parking garage, the EWS never came on. Have you have the EWS ring replaced? There was the recall on them.

As for jumping it, jump it from a car/truck, but the car or truck should not be running. I have jumped an R before with a weak battery, jump fired it right up. My GS was a different story. I had to have leave the jumper cables hooked up for almost 5 mintues before it would fire and then it was only after I held the throttle half open to give the engine a little boost.

[pdxrmccgs]

My 09 owners manual has detailed jump start procedure. When
I saw it/read it I decided factory was telling me something about
something.

Edit...I did not read your post carefully about unhooking the battery for storage.
I agree with previous poster re EWS. I'm not sure what that is indicating
but find it a bit odd. Sorry I am not more helpful.

pdx

[marc]

To start the bike the engine management system pulses the EWS antenna to read the value in the near by key. If the value is OK the rest of the starting procedure can continue. If you starter clicked, then the value was OK.

It takes power to pulse the antenna. With a weak battery turning the starter can drain the battery enough such that the engine management controller (BMS-K unit) loses operating power and needs to restart. At restart it again tries to pulse the EWS antenna to read the key. There may not be enough power left in the battery to perform this function. As a result you get an EWS warning.

This EWS comes AFTER trying to start the bike. The fact that you were able to attempt a start in the first place tells you that you don't really have an EWS condition. What you have is not enough power to reliably run the bike.

[pdxrmccgs]

Mark again has posted what I think is an excellent analysis of
the situation. The start-key I believe is a passive RFID device and
both receives its rf energy from the EWS antenna and then
transmits its stored secret code back to the
EWS through the EWS antenna. I would think that low battery power would throw the
EWS fault code. Apparently this does not mean zero battery
power as the engine will not cold start unless there is enough
power to burn fuel completely to satisfy the emission police.
I am certainly not an expert on this as the technology has
run way ahead of me, but I think it is very interesting.