hey everyone,
i{m the proud owner of a cheap chinese 250cc bike which i'm using to travel in south america.
lately i've been having a mysterious electrical problem- when i ride at night and turn on the lights, after around 20-25 minutes the bike loses electrical power- the high beams don't work, then the lights turn off, then the indicators stop working, then the dials, and when i switch off the bike it completely dies and when i turn the ignition to "on" nothing happens. after a perios of time between 5 minutes-2 hours the bike returns to normal and works perfectly.
i've checked the battery and it has sufficient voltage(14V when idle, 12.8 when everything is off) so that's not the problem.
the problem has occured twice so far- first time i looked and found that the cheap chinese light bulbs melted in their cheap chinese housing and short-circuited the electrical system, so i replaced them. the second time it happened i could find no fault at all- battery fine, fuse fine, light housings whole and good.
i'm thinking perhaps because my bike has two front headlights(they copied the front off an old KLR) the headlights are draining the battery and when it has no power left it dies and after some time the battery regains it's power to start up the bike. could that be possible?
any other ideas would be welcome. thanks!