Post by: Mongrel on April 29, 2018, 04:10:46 PM
Everything on the bike has been tested as far as load & output, regulator, etc. Did that pretty thoroughly with Ed in fall... 2016 (I think?). It's not an electrical issue with the bike as far as I or anyone else can tell.
I threw away my old manual charger years ago and bought a good quality smart charger - actually a friend gave it to me as a present after I'd lost the first three batteries... ha. I stopped buying cheaper batteries, since they seemed to dry out very easily - possibly the heat of the bike. But even after moving to a glass mat gel battery last spring, (the highly recommended Deka ETX16L), the damn thing is pooched once again! Of course I bought it last march and it had a 1-year warranty, so just in time for it to be a useless brick. Yep. I asked the dealer and it was a no go, and it was a cash sale so I can't go to the manufacturer.
:musicboohoo:
Anyway, the battery worked great all last year, and seemed to be perfectly fine when I plugged it in around December. It's stored during winter in a closet, which is a bit cramped but certainly not overheated (and there IS space around the battery) and is always on the tender, which as far as I know should work fine (the tender was ALSO tested when we tested the bike) .
Then when it came time to ride this year, I noticed someone had unplugged the tender at some point - could have been a friend plugging in a phone when they visited, or any other visitor. Well crap. Okay, no big deal though, right? Took it out to put it on the bike and it was deader than dead. Okay I guess I just need to charge it up. Wrong. All the tender does now is fry the battery - after a couple days of the battery being on the restore setting, I noticed I could hear it boiling inside... just like the old dead lead-acids I'd had in the past. Even though this was a sealed unit!
So I'm wondering - is it possible that the tender being unplugged BUT the connectors still attached to the contacts would have formed a circuit and ruinously discharged the battery? I wouldn't have thought so, but I'm (supposedly) only using high-quality stuff at every point in the chain, and I've ruled out everything else as far as I can tell.
'Cause I mean, I got no damn idea what's wrong at this point, other than I'm still pretty sure it's not the bike.
Post by: Martin on April 29, 2018, 04:18:22 PM
Regards Martin.
Post by: The Mighty Gryphon on April 29, 2018, 04:19:17 PM
Post by: Mongrel on April 29, 2018, 05:31:38 PM
What amperage rate does your charger run at, can it be switched between charge rates. Trickle chargers will not charge up a dead battery they don't have enough output.It's fixed at 2 Amps output.
Regards Martin.
Post by: Scott_ on April 29, 2018, 05:37:58 PM
Post by: Martin on April 29, 2018, 06:06:45 PM
Regards Martin.
Post by: Mongrel on April 30, 2018, 04:20:19 AM
Another question is:: Is the charger rated for the battery type you are using it with..... not all smart chargers are that "smart" to use on just any type battery.
As far as I know it is... been a while since I got it. I think if something wasn't right in terms of output that would have come up when we tested it last year?
Post by: rbm on April 30, 2018, 07:41:51 AM
Post by: Mongrel on April 30, 2018, 10:39:37 AM
Some smart chargers illuminate a LED when you connect the battery up to them. This is an indicator that you have the polarity of the clips on the battery correct. It is entirely possible that this LED drained your battery over time, as Gryph pointed out.
Yep, mine has several. One for "maintenance", one for "charging/recovery attempt" and a nice big red one for "You done fucked up!" (wrong polarity).
It's entirely possible that I looked at it several times in the winter and saw the green "maintenance" light, not realizing the thing was unplugged and figured everything was okay.
Going to try a 7.5A trickle recovery as was mentioned, and if that doesn't work, I guess I'll give Glen a call.
Post by: Martin on April 30, 2018, 04:29:27 PM
Good luck regards Martin.
Post by: stokester on April 30, 2018, 06:59:09 PM
The Deltran battery tenders I have, one with a BMW logo puts out 1.25 amps and the smaller one at .75 amps. The LEDs are red and green with a flashing red indicating it is not hooked up properly, flashing red is charging, flashing green is charge at 80%, solid green is fully charged.
I always have at least one of my bikes on a tender and sometimes two if I haven't ridden in a while (not often). So far my two Odessy AGM batteries at at 6 and 8 years old while the sealed Panasonic is at 5 years.
Post by: johnny on April 30, 2018, 07:28:58 PM
deltran battery tender jr... gotts 3 of them... plug it in and forget it... battery must be charged up 1st cause its a maintainer... (http://products.batterytender.com/Chargers/Battery-Tender-Junior-12V-0-75A.html)
batterytenderjr.jpg (27.01 kB . 576x576 - viewed 296 times)j o