Battery keeps dying

The battery is filled with electrolyte. It has the correct amount in it. When I did the draw test I disconnected the negative battery cable and put one multimeter tip on the negative side of the batter and the other on the battery cable and I got a reading of 0.02 which I figure is about normal. When I revved the engine to test the charging the bikes headlight was on. I didn't test it with any turn signals or high beams. I watched a youtube video on how to test the R/R and they said to do it a different way than you just described so tomorrow I'll take another reading of it doing it that way.

.02? What DC volts, or Amp's?

The meter was set to DC volts

You want to test for DC Amp's when doing the Draw test. Hopefully it will be 0. There should be Nothing drawing from the battery at All when key is off.

Thanks. I'll give it another shot tomorrow on the amps setting

I gave into my curiosity and checked with the AMPS setting It's reading 0.0 so I'm assuming there's no draw. I just remembered the two times the battery died I left the kill switch on the run setting. Does the bike draw power if the kill switch is on but the key is off?

nickleo373 wrote: ...just remembered the two times the battery died I left the kill switch on the run setting. Does the bike draw power if the kill switch is on but the key is off?

Nope. Lots of us just leave the kill switch in RUN position and forget about it.

Good Fortune!

nickleo373 wrote: I gave into my curiosity and checked with the AMPS setting It's reading 0.0 so I'm assuming there's no draw. I just remembered the two times the battery died I left the kill switch on the run setting. Does the bike draw power if the kill switch is on but the key is off?

Not supposed to. Go back and do the test again, be sure the meter is set to 10 DC Amp's. You may well have to move the red lead to a different socket in your meter.
With the meter at the battery cable, turn the Start/ Stop switch ON. If the bike is wired correctly, it should still read 0. Only when you turn the ignition Switch ON should the Start/ Run switch have power through it.
Did you do the AC Volt test, black wire on Battery negative, Red lead at R/R Red wire Bullet connector before the battery Positive? With it running of course. So if you can measure any AC Vots. If it measures less than 1/2 a volt, .5 ACV, that's fine. But if you get much more like a volt or more. Then your Rectifier has a leaking diode. Then I would replace the R/R assy.

Two possibiloities come to mind.

One:
If you are only running the bike while doing tests, and not actually riding it any real distance, the battery may be draining, but not getting enough time to recharge. It takes a good 10 minutes of sustained riding to fully recharge from a cold start.

The 550's, when working properly, will get to about 14.2 to 14.6 max, when revving. If it shows higher, it's usually due to voltage losses in the sensing circuit (brown wire to the reg/rec).

Two:
If you are riding it for a decent amount of time, it could be the regulator is failing. The most common way for these reg/recs to fail from old age, that I've seen, is they lose voltage over the course of a ride. At first they appear fine under brief tests. Revving will show 14v+. But on a long ride, the 14v will gradually reduce to under 12v. It's difficult to diagrnose because you have to ride it for over a half hour with a voltmeter attached and watch the voltage.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I still have to run the r/r test again when i get off work later. Loudvhx that could be a possibility. The bike is still being worked on because after running for a minute it starts to smoke from somewhere and i dont want to run it and risk breaking something. I've only actually rode it 20 feet on my driveway. It might not have enough time to charge