Good evening. Firstly....wishing you all a Happy New Year in advance. I was hoping my first thread on the forum, after joining yesterday, was going to be an introduction. Alas, after picking up my 2017 Panagali 959 2 days ago, I've not even managed to get her started, so spent 2 days working through the issue and I'll have to delay my full intorduction until tomorrow. Anyway, thanks in advance for any help you can give! I've had a good look around this and other forums and no yet sorted my problem out. Short (ish) story - bought the bike privately. After driving 4.5hrs the owner could not start the bike, stating he'd forgotten to turn the Optimiser on 2 weeks previously when coming back from its MOT, so the battery was flat (bike is rarely used as the owner goes away a lot on business - plus the BikeTrac allegedley consumes a lot of power). He switched the optimiser on for half an hour and the bike started and ran fine. He switched off the bike to put fuel in and the bike would not turn over again. Fuel pump whirs, dash lights up and the bike (starter / solonoid / relay?) just "clicks". Will put a video up shortly. Again, just let the battery charge for 20 mins or so and it fired up fine again. Stupidly perhaps I assumed dead battery as it's still got the original on (3.5 years old) and intended changing out to a Lithium straight away anyway. So, I went ahead with the sale as I'd seen the bike running fine. Got the bike home (courier delivery as did not want to ride in the snow!) and of course it would not start once home. I put the battery on my 5 amp optimiser overnight with a recon program on it too. No luck starting her the next morning, despite the optimiser not showing any faults on the battery. On my multimeter though I am only seeing 11.8 - 12.2v on average from the battery and it gets killed quickly after attempted bike starts. I've taken a lot more steps to find the problem, but this post is already getting very long, so I will finish this one up and add a video / photos and more details in a moment. Many thanks for any input and I am looking forward to chatting much more on the forum. Hopefully about some nicer topics! Thanks, Stu
Just adding some more details of the steps I have taken, since trying to rejuvinate the original battery: - I have 2 other bikes, both with quite new batteries. After removing the existing battery, I have wired my other batteries in one at a time. Not hooked up directly to bike terminals as such... I have run a set of leads from the other bikes directly onto the 959 terminals. I'm seeing 14.4v on one battery and 13.1v on the other, so I think thats plenty? No difference at all. The bike "clicks" and does not turn over. No errors on the dash at all. - I have removed the battery box completely and cleaned the corroded positive and negative terminals on the battery connections and also negative connectors that terminate on the side of the engine (see photo). Wire brushed them and they are all perfect now. - I have removed and cleaned all fuses. - Tried starting in and out of gear with clutch in, side stand up/down and every combination. - I have already ordered my lithium battery but that won't arrive for a week and I suspect the issues is not the battery anyway given I have tried other batteries (although not hooked up "directly" as such). Could it be something to do with the immobilisor or the BikeTrac tracker? Or maybe it's starting to look like a starter or solonoid issue? I don't understand why the previous owner managed to start it with just a battery boost and I can't get anything out of it so I am not ruling out stupiditity / something obvious quite yet! Previous owner is being very helpful by the way. We are texting and trying different things. Thanks again!
Battery shagged, if it's been on charge and still not got enough to turn over even slowly don't waste time on it. Hooking up another battery to it most likely won't work either as it is so low. Bite the bullet and wait for the new one to arrive.
Had same issue on my 899, same noise replaced with new battery & all good. It takes a lot of juice to start !
Thanks for all the replies. I was hoping it was the battery but slightly confused due to trying the other batteries with the old battery disconnected from the bike. What I did was run fly leads directly from the other bikes to the 959 battery leads (with the Duke battery disconnected) if that makes sense. And those batteries have a high Ah rating. Hmmm maybe I need to be patient indeed and wait for the new one to arrive. But you know what it’s like! New bike which is just an ornament at the moment 8-(
It’s a knackered battery, as others have said, forget the battery and wait for the new one. Don’t forget.... if you unplug a 899/959 battery and don’t wait something like 20 mins until plugging a new one in it temp bricks the ECU... you then need to go to a dealer. And yes biketrac will kill a battery eventually, the newer ones don’t seem so bad and my V2 can be left quite a few weeks
As said, battery’s fubar. Connecting another in as you did just dumps electric into the dead battery (simplistically speaking) which acts as a soak and doesn’t let enough flow through to the starter which needs basically all the battery can throw at it to turn over the engine. The clicking is the starter relay. Get a new battery or take out the dead one and put in a good one of one of your other bikes.
Try removing the battery and connecting the jump leads from another good battery straight onto the 959 battery cables. That way you’ll know for sure. Now, if the good battery was on your other bike and this bike were running, if the 959 wouldn’t start then you can rule the battery out as the cause.
Thanks for this. I've actually tried this already yesterday and no luck. But I'll put full details here of what I did in more detail.. I have a 1973 Honda CB350 which has a 3-4 month old battery on it. It has a higher Ah rating than the battery on the 959 and is fully charged. It is still on the Honda though as removing it will be a pain. The Honda starts fine. I have made up a temporary set of "jump" leads, using some Optimate cables. Basically its crocodile clips on one end, which go onto the Honda battery, these go through an Optimate extension cable and I have bolted the other ends straight onto the 959 battery terminals. For clarity, the 959 battery was removed completed yesterday and does look like its dead as it won't properly charge on my CTEK optimiser. So the 959 battery is now acting as a drain at all. The only thing to mention about my jump lead setup is that because its an optimate cable I am using, it does have a 15A fue in-line. Not sure if that and the fact it's not a big chunky cable, would limit the voltage from the Honda battery to the 959 in some way. So, that's how it's all wired up right now and the bike will not turn over at all. Thanks for the other replies as well everyone. I'm fairly relaxed about waiting for the lithium batery to arrive but it would make me feel more relaxed if I can at least start the bike once and know that I don't have a more major ussue going on somewhere. Cheers.
New Years Greetings! Sorry about your hassles, its a damned nuisance when the toys won't burst into life... I guess the question is which is the bigger pain, staring at a big red Ducati worrying that something major is wrong for several days, or taking a fully charged battery (I'd put it on charge overnight before doing so to be 100% certain) off one of your bikes and connecting it?
Happy New Year! Exactly that! At the moment I have a stunning (silent) thing of beauty sitting in my garage, waiting to shout it's Akrapovic rumbles around the village and upset all the neighbours. Quite happy to take the battery off the Honda. It's a hassle but not major. It is a very different size battery though (shorter but deeper) so it won't fit in the 959 battery tray, which will mean further messing about on the 959. The one benefit of all of this is, 2 days into ownership, I now know how to remove the fairings and where all the cable runs are.
Hi Stu. The cable thickness will have a massive difference, I think you know this... Can’t you got hold of a decent set of jumper leads? Ian
Having 3 bikes and i guess a car or two in the household maybe nip down to Halfords and get yourself a Noco boost pack, at least you can start the bike up and its a useful to have in the garage for the next time.
Half thought this may not help matters, but wasn't 100%, so it's good to have confirmation. Thanks. In my close, it's full of car and bike addicts (no other Ducati's but everything from Benelli's to Hondas and Harley's), so I can easiy borrow a set of decent jump leads from my neighbour. I'll do that this morning
You did the correct thing disconnectig the old battery when you tried jump starting ... but the Leads need to be much thicker to avoid the losses. Use traditional car battery jump leads - connected from your CAR to the two terminals you disconnected from the battery. That should work. Leave your car running when you do this to get the voltage up closer to 14V. That way you can rule out the side stand switch / immobiliser / tracker etc...
Thats a damn good idea. The RS6 and the other bikes are on optimsors anyway, but I think it would be handy to have one of these on hand.
Ignore the Ah of the Honda battery, what’s its CCA (cold cranking amps)? An inline 4 with 4 small 125cc cylinders needs much less to crank it than a V2 with 2 whopping great 480cc cylinders. It could be the Honda battery is not powerful enough to spin over the Duc engine. Oh snd you definitely need bigger cables, proper jump leads, without a fuse. That 15a fuse should have blown and broken the circuit. When using jump leads to start a car you can feel them get warm, the Optimate leads should have melted if there was enough ampage going through them.
