I want to apologize in advance for the length of this question, but I want to give all the details in case some fine detail is needed.....
December 2018...
I have a 2011 / 2013 Polaris SBA 800 that I bought in Dec 2018. It was a 2011 SBA 800 ( Indy Dan long rod motor) when I bought it but a week after I brought it home my rental homes garage caught fire and burned the sled. Insurance company totaled the sled and we bought it back.
The 2011 sled did not have electric start. The 2013 sled does have electric start. But I am not using it as I don't have a ES clutch, yet. Don't know if I will put it on or not but that is a moot topic for this discussion. Suffice it to say that the 2013 sled has a battery and the factory charging harness.
I found a super clean, low millage 2013 SBA 800 roller chassis that was without the motor & clutch as the 2013 motor had broke a rod. I pulled the 2011 motor out of the burned sled and dropped it in to the 2013 chassis and used the 2011 motor wiring harness and injector set up because the 2013 stuff will not work on the 2011 motor. Everything went smoothly, plug and play and the sled runs great.
No issues at all and everything works as designed. ( At this point in time I was not using the battery for anything, it was just along for the ride.)
March 2019....
I decided I wanted more light output from the stock lights, having grown used to the LED lights I had installed on my last sled.
After much research I ended up going with the Cyclops brand plug and play LED light kit for Polaris AC lighting sleds. (I'm a flat-lander here in Michigan and we do a lot of night time riding deep in the woods.) The install went as it should of and the lights worked/ are working great.
( The plug and play light kit consists of resisters, regulator/rectifier & LED driver for each bulb. )
( I was still not using any power off of the battery, more on this in a bit. )
December 2019....
I had a custom GPS installed on my sled. When the shop wired it in they tapped into what they thought was a 12 volt dc power source on the back side on the key switch using a dash mounted on/ off switch. While the GPS appeared to be working correctly after a while I noticed that there was a buzzing / humming sound coming from the GPS power up harness. I called the shop and they did not know what might be causing the issue but they sent me a new harness to install in case the original harness was bad from the factory.
( At this time I noticed that my battery was dead and would not take a charge any more. I replaced it with a new battery from the dealer. )
I later discovered that where the GPS power cord had been tapped into was not a good source of DC power. It was seeing Ac voltage and that was causing the buzzing/ humming to the best of my knowledge.
March 2020...
I decided to install a set of aux lights on the front of the hood for those really dark rides deep deep deep into the woods. ( Plus I'm just a little bit night blind I guess. )
Again after a good deal of research I went with a set of 2" Cyclops brand Aurora Aux LED lights. My plan was to run the aux lights and the GPS off of the battery.
I ran a separate/fused power wire up from the battery, up to where the factory plug is that you remove when you pull the hood off. Now when I pull the hood off I just have to unplug 2 connectors instead of the one. This was done to allow me a clean & simple way of powering the aux lights and the GPS.
The Cyclops kit comes with a full wiring harness with a lighting relay.
I wired the aux lights in through a dash switch as well as the high beam lights so that the aux lights only come on when the high breams are on as well as the dash switch is on. I tapped the relay trigger into the high beam wire after the reg/rec so that I have clean DC power to trigger the relay.
Again, everything seemed to be working correctly.... Seemed!!!
While doing some wrapping up and cleaning up the install I found out that the battery was not charging. NOT GOOD!
I did some research and trouble shooting, tried swapping out the sleds voltage regulator and poured over the wiring diagrams to try to figure out what was going on.
The season ended early for us and I put the sled into storage without figuring out why the battery would not charge.
Current time line....
I dug back into the wiring on the sled to see if I could figure out what is happening and after a lot of head scratching and looking around I found the the battery would charge correctly with the hood removed for the sled.
Further testing has shown that when the replacement LED lights in the hood are connected, the battery will not charge. When I unplug the LED harness and reinstall the factory halogen lights the battery WILL charge!
After calling into Cyclops for some assistance, we tried a few things. I pulled the resisters out to see if that made a difference. No Joy!
Nothing seems to correct the issue of the battery not charging with the LED's hooked up. They are stumped and I am waiting on a call back to see if they can come up with a answer.
The end result is that with the factory lights installed the battery will charge, with the LED's installed, it wont charge.
Having a battery that will not stay charged will not work for being able to use the GPS and the aux lights.
First question...
Does anyone have ANY ideas as to what might be causing this problem?
Second question...
If it turns out that the LED light kit just will not work, how do I trigger the aux lights? The factory headlights are run off of AC power, so I don't think I can use the high beam's AC signal to trigger the relay.
Thank you in advance for any suggestions and again, sorry for such a long read.....
Bob
December 2018...
I have a 2011 / 2013 Polaris SBA 800 that I bought in Dec 2018. It was a 2011 SBA 800 ( Indy Dan long rod motor) when I bought it but a week after I brought it home my rental homes garage caught fire and burned the sled. Insurance company totaled the sled and we bought it back.
The 2011 sled did not have electric start. The 2013 sled does have electric start. But I am not using it as I don't have a ES clutch, yet. Don't know if I will put it on or not but that is a moot topic for this discussion. Suffice it to say that the 2013 sled has a battery and the factory charging harness.
I found a super clean, low millage 2013 SBA 800 roller chassis that was without the motor & clutch as the 2013 motor had broke a rod. I pulled the 2011 motor out of the burned sled and dropped it in to the 2013 chassis and used the 2011 motor wiring harness and injector set up because the 2013 stuff will not work on the 2011 motor. Everything went smoothly, plug and play and the sled runs great.
No issues at all and everything works as designed. ( At this point in time I was not using the battery for anything, it was just along for the ride.)
March 2019....
I decided I wanted more light output from the stock lights, having grown used to the LED lights I had installed on my last sled.
After much research I ended up going with the Cyclops brand plug and play LED light kit for Polaris AC lighting sleds. (I'm a flat-lander here in Michigan and we do a lot of night time riding deep in the woods.) The install went as it should of and the lights worked/ are working great.
( The plug and play light kit consists of resisters, regulator/rectifier & LED driver for each bulb. )
( I was still not using any power off of the battery, more on this in a bit. )
December 2019....
I had a custom GPS installed on my sled. When the shop wired it in they tapped into what they thought was a 12 volt dc power source on the back side on the key switch using a dash mounted on/ off switch. While the GPS appeared to be working correctly after a while I noticed that there was a buzzing / humming sound coming from the GPS power up harness. I called the shop and they did not know what might be causing the issue but they sent me a new harness to install in case the original harness was bad from the factory.
( At this time I noticed that my battery was dead and would not take a charge any more. I replaced it with a new battery from the dealer. )
I later discovered that where the GPS power cord had been tapped into was not a good source of DC power. It was seeing Ac voltage and that was causing the buzzing/ humming to the best of my knowledge.
March 2020...
I decided to install a set of aux lights on the front of the hood for those really dark rides deep deep deep into the woods. ( Plus I'm just a little bit night blind I guess. )
Again after a good deal of research I went with a set of 2" Cyclops brand Aurora Aux LED lights. My plan was to run the aux lights and the GPS off of the battery.
I ran a separate/fused power wire up from the battery, up to where the factory plug is that you remove when you pull the hood off. Now when I pull the hood off I just have to unplug 2 connectors instead of the one. This was done to allow me a clean & simple way of powering the aux lights and the GPS.
The Cyclops kit comes with a full wiring harness with a lighting relay.
I wired the aux lights in through a dash switch as well as the high beam lights so that the aux lights only come on when the high breams are on as well as the dash switch is on. I tapped the relay trigger into the high beam wire after the reg/rec so that I have clean DC power to trigger the relay.
Again, everything seemed to be working correctly.... Seemed!!!
While doing some wrapping up and cleaning up the install I found out that the battery was not charging. NOT GOOD!
I did some research and trouble shooting, tried swapping out the sleds voltage regulator and poured over the wiring diagrams to try to figure out what was going on.
The season ended early for us and I put the sled into storage without figuring out why the battery would not charge.
Current time line....
I dug back into the wiring on the sled to see if I could figure out what is happening and after a lot of head scratching and looking around I found the the battery would charge correctly with the hood removed for the sled.
Further testing has shown that when the replacement LED lights in the hood are connected, the battery will not charge. When I unplug the LED harness and reinstall the factory halogen lights the battery WILL charge!
After calling into Cyclops for some assistance, we tried a few things. I pulled the resisters out to see if that made a difference. No Joy!
Nothing seems to correct the issue of the battery not charging with the LED's hooked up. They are stumped and I am waiting on a call back to see if they can come up with a answer.
The end result is that with the factory lights installed the battery will charge, with the LED's installed, it wont charge.
Having a battery that will not stay charged will not work for being able to use the GPS and the aux lights.
First question...
Does anyone have ANY ideas as to what might be causing this problem?
Second question...
If it turns out that the LED light kit just will not work, how do I trigger the aux lights? The factory headlights are run off of AC power, so I don't think I can use the high beam's AC signal to trigger the relay.
Thank you in advance for any suggestions and again, sorry for such a long read.....
Bob
