Solenoids or Bad batteries?

[RThill4355]

A friend has a 2001 GL1800 that has been sitting for over a year. Battery was not on a Battery Tender, went to start it, of course nothing, not even enough juice for dash lights. Put it on a charger (10 amps) over nite, went to start it, had dash lights and head and tail lights, but noting, no solenoid clicks. Put another (used ) battery that was good enough to start my "03 Gl1800 and had been on a battery tender for its life outside of bike. Again, lights, but no clicking from solenoids. Also, just for fun, put in reverse to see if anything would happen, and reverse lite on dash did NOT come on. Solenoid(s)?
Bike was on side stand, and in neutral and clutch pushed in. Any thoughts? Battery from friends bike barely passed load test, borrowed battery did.

[GoldWingrGreg]

The battery is the heart to all electrical systems. Have the battery(s) tested.

[themainviking]

Ditto on the battery. May look good but till you test it for adequate voltage to run the PCM AND ALSO start the bike, it needs to be considered as the fault. I had a perfectly good battery in my bike, less than a year old Motobatt, was on a tender all winter. I left the key on and the radio played with all other electronics working or not as the case may be (I did not check to see what all was draining battery life). Anyway, after two hours, the battery was at 6.54V. Even after charging for longtime - overnight - at 2 amps, the battery only got up to 9 Volts, which is enough for my smoke detector, but not the motorcycle. So, consider the battery to be at fault until you have fully tested its voltage and run a load test on it.

[keithg64]

Yeah ditto on all of that. Your gonna have to start with a well known good battery to start checking anything else. She might just come back to life with a good battery.

[RThill4355]

Well, a newer battery, plus some keen(laugh) observations fixed the problem. I put in a newer battery that passed voltage and load test, Still no start, then checked side stand, still no start, shifted out of neutral, still no start (clutch was pulled in ), I am stumped, til I sat back and looked at bike, then kill switch, yep, you guessed it, bike had been moved around a lot during garage renovation and someone had used the kill switch to stop or just simply moved it. Observant?, me? no way, since I never use the kill switch, (because of Honda's problems with their other cheap switches), i don't want to be stranded out in the middle of nowhere. So, moved switch to on position and wham, motor starts and runs fine. Morale of story, look at ALL switches before condeming battery.
Thank you to all who engaged in my post.