thanks for the help
Just to say thanks. For those who are interested the indicator relay was indeed a red herring. With a healthy 12.75v across the battery and a complete discharge of the battery when anything was switched on I was suspecting a dead short to earth so I was looking for something with scorch marks on it and the battered looking relay looked a likely culprit. I didn't suspect the battery but after reading these posts i decided to eliminate the possibility by connecting up a spare battery from my other bike. To my surprise everything works fine!!
In 30 years of riding I have never had a battery fail suddenly without warning in this way and still show a voltage. It's easy to convince yourself you have got one type of problem and it sometimes takes someone else to state the obvious.
Still don't understand how the indicator relay makes a difference to the rate of discharge though, I can only guess that by disconnecting the relay i was taking a little bit of load off the battery making discharge a little slower. You live and learn!!
Last edited by paulc; 26 Jul 2012 at 19:54.
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