No charge, sir

Yesterday my car didn't start, and I needed to be somewhere, so I took the SDR out in the friggin pouring rain. Rode 5 mins to where I needed to be, and rode back 30mins later.

Today we had dry roads so I decided to go for a ride. Had to wait for a friend so I had the bike idling for quite a while (hwile) with the heated grips on. Suddenly the charging light comes on. No charge! I keep the bike running, but turn off the heated grips, thinking that it's the fan and every other gizmo that's sapping the power.
Light didn't go out, so we rode off to cool the bike down, no heated grips on. Light went out for a very short while, but came on... a few mintues later the bike dies as I'm running out of juice.

Got the bike back to my garage and opened the battery box etc up. Some water comes out of somewhere "down there", think it was a plug or such. It's charging now and I'm heading out there to see if it was "that time of month" or if I'm looking for something serious.

Any tips..?!

Thanks!

In the owners manual they recommend to periodically check the battery cable ends for tightness and cleanliness and a light coating of non-acidic grease.

I would start thare and work my way to checking all of the ground terminals for tightness. let me know if you seek further instruction.

You can test the alternator output at any battery fed lead, I would use the starter solenoid or battery itself for a good measurement.

starter solenoid is the easiest place, remove the chin guard, on the LH side, it is the chrome outside Allen screw under the clearish cover.

same place I did the HOW-TO on the battery tender installation if you wanna see pic's...

If you had the battery tender lead install as per to instructions, you could test your alternator output at the positive lead from that, easy schmeazy.

Righto... according to the guy who fixed it at KTM Centre in Hemel Hempsted it was the cable between the battery and the voltage regulator that was broken. Apparently the "ear" on the regulator side had snapped. So basically the circuit was broken.

I must hail praise to KTM Centre in Hemel Hempsted; I drove down unannounced, they took the bike in at about 10:30, and by 12:30 I had recieved a phone call from Mark telling me it was fixed and what had been broken. Perfect service! I managed to convince a friend of mine to drive back down (as my car was still in the shop), and now 3h later the bike's back in the garage.
I've double checked the voltage and it's around 14v depending on load...

... all's well! Can't express how relieved I feel that a) it wasn't a big problem b) they managed to locate it and fix it. *phew*

Thanks RRR, I know exactly what you mean now.