If you go out to start your bike in the morning, say this morning for instance, and it turns over twice and dies you'd be thinking flat battery (and wondering why,,,)
If you put it on charge and 10 minutes later the charger tells you the battery's charged, would this be a reasonable indication that the battery's focced?
It's used every day, not checked the charging yet with a multimeter as I'm still charging the battery but 10 mins on the charger to full looks fishy...
very fishy......the multimeter will tell you
One, is never going to be enough.....
May have one cell gone down on the battery. Charge it up then test the voltage, leave it for a few hours and check the voltage again. If it`s dropped a significant amount your battery is more than likely focced. :rolleyes
In my experience, if a battery on your bike/ car/van fails as soon as the bad weathers here, it's buggered. Obviously it makes sense to test it before you splurge on a new un, Battery testers are cheap if you don't have a multimeter, I've got an old gunson one cost twelve quid I think. But I'd bet its buggered...
I just bought a (albeit crappy) multimeter from B&Q for £5
Oh yeah, forgot to mention when I got the multimeter out the battery was focced on that too!
I'll give it a go tonight when I get in
Have a good look at the battery terminals and the leads on the bike. If they're dirty / corroded then that's not going to help.
Well, got home tonight, checked the battery, charged to 12.8 volts.
Started the bike, off she went. Ran for a minute, rechecked the battery, 12.8 volts.
Started the bike, revved to 4-5K, 14.2 volts. Looks OK, seems like the reg/rec's doing it's stuff.
Have left it in the garage for a couple of hours and will go back to check..
Weird though, there's a data tool alarm on but it takes over a week to run the battery down. Heated grips that were turned off... lets see what happens
I've got a datatool alarm on mine and it does flatten the battery quite quickly. I've taken to pulling the fuse to the alarm if the bike is going to be left for more than a couple of days, it's still immobilised and can't be started without reconnecting the alarm and pressing the button on the remote, but it stops the battery going flat.
In saying that though, a lack of capacity in the battery does sound like you've got one cell down. I would expect to see over 13v from a freshly charged battery too, so the 12.8 is another clue.
I've ordered a Motobatt, that should do the job,,,
Normally you have 2.2 volts per cell but the internal impedance in the cells could be rising but without a discharge test, who knows,,,, I started it twice for a minute at idle and measured twice at 12.8v when stopped both times
Next question. how do you disable the bloody datatool alarm and still get the bike to work! Tempted to rip it out
