2009 GS SM5, running roughly after oil change - any ideas?

[Peter Aawen]

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Battery is definitely fully charged, smart charger kicked into auto maintain before I even shut the lights off for the night. Thought about double checking grounds, but everything else on the bike works perfectly. Not sure where exactly he stores it; but after a quick look-over, nothing obvious.

Regarding the oil, I haven't gotten it to operating temp since oil change. I know according to manual and instructions on the oil tank it says to check at temp. Just figured I'd at least see a low level or something at room/little above temp.

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Hmmm, that bit could be a good sign; or it could be a sign of a battery that has no 'load capacity' left at all (or never had any real under-load cranking capacity! ) such that it's very rapidly picking up just a 12v 'surface charge' that's actually asked to do something/put under load!! This is something that's fairly often seen with batteries that don't see a lot of use, but that do spend a lot of time on a tender that doesn't have any or even a good enough maintenance cycle. Because they never see a good load, they develop a very shallow 'usable voltage' surface charge, sorta like what happens in a bucket that's always got a dribble of highly mineralised water topping it up - the bucket fills up and then continually over-flows at the rate of dribbling top-up while the minerals in the water gradually settle out and solidify in the bottom of the bucket, gradually filling the bucket from the bottom up with a solid lump of rock, but still looking like they're full cos the water's up to the top and dribbling over all the time - ie, the battery is still showing 12 volts plus, but there's no real cranking capacity at that 12 volts! And while it's not exactly what you'd call 'common-place', most people are still very surprised at how many brand-new batteries get installed with this 'light surface charge, but no or very little under-load cranking capacity' condition built in ready to ruin your Spyder ryding day!!!

So I'd still suggest you get that battery load tested, or at least use a multi-meter to watch what the voltage does during the entire process of starting it. With the older magneto style charge systems these early Spyders have, you should see a voltage of at least about 13v when the battery has been 'resting' for some hours; then for all our Spyders, the battery voltage needs to remain above 12v during the entire starting process, including while the starter is actually cranking and all of the computer systems are flashing up; then it needs to show close to or above 13v while the engine's running at anything over idle after starting, and it should still show above 12v even at idle, pretty much regardless of the load... Many old school vehicles will get away with a battery that might drop as low as 10.5v while actually cranking, and many 'load testers' (devices &/or people) will report on that battery as still being 'good' - but for our Spyders, anything less than 12v is simply NOT GOOD ENOUGH!! They are quite power hungry, and if your battery no longer has (or never had!) the capacity/depth of charge to remain above 12v while your Spyder is going thru it's power-hungry start-up process, then your battery isn't up to the task facing it!

As for the oil, I too would've expected to see some oil on the dipstick after any running if there's definitely 4 Qts in there.... So there's something odd going on there too, but I reckon you can't do much more than check everything was done correctly during the oil change (you haven't got the wrong filter in there have you? ) then put that aside until you can actually run the engine for long enough to get the oil up to ITS operating temp in order to see what's actually going on with the level... Or until you can't stand not knowing any longer and drain out all the oil you just put in before refilling it again, just to check that you DID put the necessary qty/volume in?! (Do you really need to ask how I KNOW this does actually happen?? )