Okay, so a few of you know that I seem to have the worst luck with batteries, going through a new one almost every year. I think I'm at about 11 years with the bike and 7 batteries in that time.
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.
