Recently purchased a multistrada 1200 2011. Having loads of issues. Bike was stood for a few weeks. Flat battery. I charged it up a little changed battery in smart key and it fired up. Purchased an optemate 4 charger and was told to plug it in the socket. Lights on dash came on rear light and front light flashing on and off to. It stopped doing it and I left it. Week later flat battery again. Changed battery. Now another week has gone by. It seems totally flat and smart key not activating. Any ideas please.
What sort of battery have you fitted ? Charging through the CANBUS has never appealed to me so I have always fitted the charging lead direct to the battery terminals. I’m sure plenty of people on here do the DDS plug but it’s not for me. A battery, even if it’s powering a tracker, shouldn’t discharge in a week so the is a small chance the CANBUS is not powering down all the relays when you switch off. The favourite is the starter relay which has an always live feed. I thought I had a similar problem a while ago and there are a few suggestions in the post. I’ll see if I can find a link. Andy
What socket? Presumably the diagnostic one which connects direct to the battery. Can you explain this further? What lights? On the bike or the charger? Ignition off or on?
Brake light. Dash goes through start up procedure and headlight flashes to. It's not random flashing it's like a sequence. Happens when I plugged optimizer into canbus jack socket.
one socket is ignition controlled and the other is permanently live, so which one have you pluged it into?
Weird. That's not normal. The diagnostic (canbus) connector has 4 pins; battery +ve (pin1), ground (pin2), CAN Hi (pin3) and CAN Lo (pin4). The optimate should connect to pins 1 & 2. It sounds like it may be making a connection to one (or both) of the CAN lines.
That makes sense. He hasn't plugged it into the canbus socket but into the switched power outlet socket. So the dash would light but the battery wouldn't get charged.
Okie dokie. What I'm going to do is just use crocodile connectors and put optimate 4 on standard settings. See if that starts the light show. Or hopefully charge the battery.
Ahh, that makes sense. My assumption you were using the DDS socket is my mistake so forget about that bit but I’d fit the Optimate charging pigtail to the battery terminals and route the cable out through the side. Andy
Make sure the red switch isn't left down...... it can drain the battery really fast. Also once the battery has "gone flat" throw it away and replace.... even if it's "NEW".
Cheers. But don't you press the red button down to turn bike off? So is it a case of turn it off then flick it back up. I do tend to leave it down after I turn bike off
That's your issue. On the early bikes the software "seeks the key" if it is down, you must return it to the off position when stopping. Perhaps one of the Ducati tech's on here can tell you when they fixed the bug. I'm sure all the bikes to 2012 suffered this.
@AirCon is right, leaving the red switch down can drain the battery in a matter of hours on the early 2010-2011 models. The only time I've every had to use a breakdown service on a Multistrada was for a flat battery because I left the switch in the down position overnight while on tour in Northern Spain. I seem to remember that Ducati did an update to the software to show a reminder on the dash when the ignition was switched off to put the red switch in the up position. I thought this update may also have helped reduced this problem but I stand to be corrected. Also, as @AirCon says, after the battery was completely flattened it never held enough charge to start the bike if left for more than than 3 or 4 days.
