I Found It! I Found It!

[Iahawk]

Yee Ha!! After almost of 5 years of owning my scoot I finally tracked down the parasitic draw! (I hope).

I've just been unhooking the negative battery terminal between rides for the past few years to stop the battery drain. Not too much trouble but would still rather not have to do it. After watching the Garret Seesing (Scooter911) youtube video on tracking down parasitic drains I followed his instructions.

unhook neg battery cable..set multimeter to milliamps..red probe on neg. battery cable, black probe on neg battery terminal. Definite draw. Start unhooking things until the draw goes to zero.

Finally found the culprit.

Part # 3860A, 'Control Assembly Unit Lighting' . Circled in yellow in the pic below. Looks just like a smaller version of the CDI. Couldn't find anything about it in my service manual. Started googling the part numbers until I found on the part...

$61 at Solano Cycle's online store for an OEM replacement.

Should be plug and play. Before I pull the trigger and order, is there anything I'm missing? Seems pretty cut and dried...unplug this part and the draw goes to zero..plug it back in and the draw goes way up.

So unless I hear any advice to the contrary I'll go ahead and get the part ordered this weekend.

Happy 4th of July to our USA forum members.

[TBR125]

That's great. I would just make sure that that is the only part that removes the draw when unplugged. I had a similar issue on a car but the part I thought was bad simply completed the circuit to the actual culprit.

[Iahawk]

yeah, a little worried that something like that may happen here, too...I unplugged everything under the front cover and this was the main draw. The plug to the instruments also had a tiny draw but I figured you'd expect that with the digital clock. The lighting control unit had about 5x the draw.

Was going to order from Solano Cycle in FL until I saw the shipping charge..$24. That's crazy. Went to Parts Outlaw and they have flat rate shipping of $9.99. So part is ordered...could arrive anywhere from 1-4 weeks.

[CROSSBOLT]

Read on here about light control modules were the pits and that poster just bypassed them. All it does is a voltage regulation so your headlight does not dim at engine idle or so I recall. Best to try and find that thread...

The fan quit on the sxs when I was using it to pull a mower. Engine went to overheat alarm quickly! Found a thing called an RFI filter (or EMI filter) in the fan circuit that had puked killing the fan. Plugs were made so it could be bypassed which is what I did in the field to cool the engine! Worked so well, the grass was cut completely! That was two years ago and it still is bypassed!

[klaviator]

There was a problem with the headlight control module on many Kymcos.  The one on my Super 8 went bad and when I ordered a replacement from Kymco it was the wrong one.  I ended up just bypassing it.  I didn't have any issues with replacing it but if you spend a lot of time idling in traffic it could run down your battery.

[Iahawk]

so the purpose of this part is to dim the headlight at idle to conserve battery? I've always found that odd..but we must have a weaker than usual charging system for that to be necessary.

Klaviator - when you say you bypassed it...do you mean you hooked the wires up to something else? (as opposed to just unhooking it altogether?)

I see that it has a 2 wire and a 4 wire connector plugged into it plus one wire that connects to the CDI.

I'll first try with the replacement and then if it still isn't working correctly I'll go to Plan B...thanks for the replies!

[klaviator]

When my headlight control module failed I had no lights.  I'm not good at electrical stuff so I had a local dealer do it.  I think they charged me 35 bucks. 

I talked to a Kymco rep later and he told me that the fix for that problem was an upgraded alternator.  I think he said there was a recall or something like that but I never looked into it.

[Iahawk]

well, my replacement lighting control module arrived today...I hooked it up, and.....still have the same parasitic draw I had with the other one...so it is either not the problem or they are both bad...crap.  Crap. Crap. Crap.

I tried unhooking the module and the scoot still runs fine...just without headlights. That's not gonna work.

Will have to think on this one for a while...too hot outside and in the garage to do anything now. I guess I can keep unhooking the negative battery terminal between rides like I've been doing. It's not too much trouble.

Since I ride it maybe once every week or two I guess I can live with that...for now.

[Kansas kymco]

Could you attach a battery maintainer to keep the battery charged? On all my bikes I have a short wire that connects to the battery and plugs into the battery maintainer that stays on the bike. My BMW 650 GS has a small parasitic draw that will run the battery down if I don't ride it regularly.  Good luck finding the draw on your scooter.

[Iahawk]

I do have a battery tender cable on the scoot and for the first few years I owned it I kept it regularly charged it but still went through a battery each year..which I thought was odd. It also took quite a while to charge it if I hadn't charged it in a week.

Since I got the current battery and have been keeping it unhooked (from the scoot)  it maintains a full charge...when I do occasionally hook it up to the tender it goes to full charge within a few minutes.

So in my mind the parasitic draw was more detrimental to the battery health than the tender was good for it, if that makes any sense.

Funny, I just did a search for 'bypassing lighting control module Kymco' and it pulled up a thread from Klaviator over on the ADV rider forum (which is a cool forum). 

[CROSSBOLT]

Are the plugs into this control one or two?

[Iahawk]

Karl, The unit has 2 plugs coming in...one is a 4 pin and the other is a 2 pin, plus a single wire that connects to the CDI.

On the ADV Rider forum one poster showed a pic of the unit with the pins labeled. The 4 pin was an input and output from the switch for each of the 2 headlight bulbs and the 2 pin was battery power, with the single wire going to the cdi.

[jak51]

Have you checked the stator.  It can drain the battery if it's failing.  Check this YouTube episode of Scooter 911:



Something to consider.

Jeff

[Iahawk]

I have not checked the stator (but thanks for the suggestion) because I was able to unplug both the light control unit and a plug to the instrument panel and I got down to 0.000 amp draw on the battery.

My scoot drains when it sits so I assumed that once I got to zero draw that I'd isolated the problem(s). (but you know what they say about 'assuming')

The truth is I don't really have a clue as to what i'm doing! Just following along with youtube advice on how to track down a parasitic draw. At this point I'm pretty much stumped so I'm planning on continuing to unplug the neg battery cable between rides. It's not ideal, but it works.

[jak51]

Don't know if you took a look at the 911 video yet, but the guy says if there is a short in the stator, there will be a parasitic draw on the battery.  Watch the video from the beginning.  And he'll tell you that you need special tolls, but towards the end of the video, he gives you alternatives (which he doesn't recommend) to the special tools.  Good luck.

Jeff