Battery related issues. Dropped battery terminal bolts and battery cover screws
- Thread starter Godders
- Start date
wspollack
Active member
Oh, my, not a good day.
Just out of curiosity, is this a brand new scoot, or is it a used one? Model and year?
Now, I gather from the thread title that the battery terminal bolts are off. If I misunderstood, the most important thing when dealing with the battery connections is to REMOVE the negative/ground connection FIRST, and, when you're done, to RECONNECT the negative/ground connection LAST. That way, you won't have any live-to-frame connection when you're messing with the positive terminal, and your screwdriver or socket could touch something.
To get at the battery tray, I believe the battery lifts out, after you get the antenna thing out of the way. To do that, you squeeze inward on the plastic antenna surround on the sides, and then flip it up. You now should be able to lift out the battery (once it's disconnected -- there are, as I recall, two wires on each terminal). From the owner's manual:
You have a manual, right?
Then, hopefully you should see the bolts. You looked on the ground, too, right?
If that doesn't help, well, then you have a lot of bodywork to take off. It's not too bad, but will take an hour or so, and a shop manual is almost required here (and even then, it's pretty poor, in terms of detailing which piece has to be removed before which other piece).
Oh, and the two Torx screws holding the battery cover in place shouldn't be very hard to screw in and unscrew. If they are, and if the bike is used, perhaps a prior owner had cross-threaded them (although I've worked with the bodywork a lot, over the course of adding electrical goodies to two C 400 GTs now, and I didn't cross-thread any screws, to my knowledge). If they're not butchered in some fashion, are you sure that you have the BOTTOM of the battery cover fully inserted, such that it will swing nicely back in place, at the top? And there are two spring clips holding it in place, one on each side, as I recall.
And what caused you to believe it was a "flat battery"? I'm not questioning you, but just trying to get some more facts, regarding what process you went through, trying to start it, I would assume. You buy this from a BMW dealership?
Good luck.
Thanks for taking time to respond. The bike was bought from a dealer and is 18 months old. On delivery the driver said the battery needed a run out. As soon as he left I tried to start it and nothing. I took the battery out eventually with a great deal of difficulty and charged it. I think the terminal bolt and nut will not be revived so ordered a new one.
I am worried about the tightness of the screws for the battery cover as they were tight to remove and go in by hand so far but then need a bit of heft l. At which point I have stopped trying to force them - just feels a bit wrong. I have a manual but not a huge range of tools.
This is meant to say dropped battery terminal but and bolt into the bodywork
wspollack
Active member
1) As I recall, the two screws at the top of the battery cover just go into the typical slide-on mounting clips. If that's the case, you could remove the door and inspect those clips, make sure they're not in backwards, look okay, etc.
Oh, and make sure that the expanding-sideways-spring clip on each side has been pushed all the way in; I use a forceful palm push. That is, make sure the battery door is flush along all edges before you go to tighten those top screws.
2) If any screws fell into the bodywork BELOW the battery tray, as I say, that could be a real hassle. I've taken apart much of the front (and back) of two C 400 GTs -- see my C 400 GT gallery, https://billanddot.com/C400GT/ -- but, sorry, I've never got that low on the front of the bike, in terms of bodywork removal. (I've concentrated on the upper part of the front of the bike, in terms of removing things.)
I bought a shop manual on eBay -- see https://www.bmw-scooters.com/index.php?threads/bought-pdf-shop-manual-for-c-400-gt-on-ebay.2474/ -- just for the purpose of taking bodywork off, and that helped a lot (although requires a lot of searching for specific panels). If you don't have that, then it's a matter of locating all the little Torx screws and all the expanding-sideways-spring clips (and there are a lot of those), and figuring out the order in which pieces need to come off.
I have a couple magnets on the end of teliscoping handles. They have them at most hardware stores and look like these:
The first thing I do is look on the floor but then I extend the magnets and search around where I think the screws may have fell. I have been pretty lucky at retreeving screws with this method. It is a lot easier than removing body panels.