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http://www.batterystuff.com/battery-char...m2012.html
Battery MINDer
The above link is to a charger/conditioner that we use. This charger has brought batteries back from the dead that have gone on to last a year + Most chargers do not have conditioning (de-sulphation ) which is the prime reason why batteries fry. Its a build up of sulfuric acid on the storage plates creating a barrier which will not allow the battery to charge. Be sure if you leave a battery on a tender for any length of time especially below freezing that it has a conditioner.
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How much are new motorcycle batteries these days?
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Quote:How much are new motorcycle batteries these days?
I believe in "the law of unintended consequences" which always bites you in the butt whenever you think you are doing something good. A guy at my marina always took his instruments off the boat after every trip. No one had ever had anything stolen from the marina, but he wanted to keep them safe. As the instruments were being carried to the boat one time, they were all dropped into the water by accident. A diver was hired at great expense to retrieve them and they were never the same.
Leave the battery in the bike whether you trickle charge it or not.
All the things that could happen if you take it out are:
1. You drop it.
2. You short out the whole bike.
3. You start a fire in the bike which burns down your entire house.
4. I could go on, but I won't.
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We could go on and on with this subject.
I have for 15 plus years always pulled my batteries and brought them inside. Never once have I had an issue. As far as shorting out your system, if you always remember the proper way to remove a battery you should have no problems. I don't think I will be dropping my batteries in the river, as I live on the Mississippi river or next to it i should say.
About burning down the house or shorting out something, how many car or bike dealerships have burned down from battery removal/installation? They do it a lot more than the average Joe so you would think we would be hearing about one all the time if it was that bad.
But I can agree with you that the inexperienced might have or run into those issues.
But like I said we can go back and forth but let's not. If you want the last word on this go for it.
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If you live in a cold to very cold state in the winter; if the battery had a good charge and is in a good state (and it won't see twenty below) I'd just leave it till spring then recharge for the following reasons.
If you remember your high school chemistry chemical reactions like heat. Things not working so well? Add energy to the system with heat. Cool things off and chemical reactions slow down or stop. It's for this reason that batteries last so much longer up north than in Phoenix. The heat just cooks batteries down here. Standard car battery lives about 18 months (person experience) where as in Minnesota seven years is not unheard of.
I had one guy come into my parts department with this very small Yuasa battery for a dirt bike that was ten years old and was finally dead. No trickle charger, stored in the bike (you need to control the sulfate that forms on the terminals so you don't ruin the bike or cables) and otherwise treated with little love.
Now my way may not be the best way any more, but I'm not convinced a battery on trickle charge does it good for that long. At least in cold states. Warm states I'm all for trickle chargers as the battery will self destruct due to the heat keeping the chemical reactions going sulfating the battery.
I never pickled an engine for storage either. Parked her, charged it up in the spring and rode her. The cold kept things like rust at bay (just another chemical reaction). With todays gas with ethanol I don't think I could get away with that so Seafoam or Stabil would be used.
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(10-29-2013, 11:28 PM)meowguy_imp Wrote: Quote:How much are new motorcycle batteries these days?
I believe in "the law of unintended consequences" which always bites you in the butt whenever you think you are doing something good. A guy at my marina always took his instruments off the boat after every trip. No one had ever had anything stolen from the marina, but he wanted to keep them safe. As the instruments were being carried to the boat one time, they were all dropped into the water by accident. A diver was hired at great expense to retrieve them and they were never the same.
Leave the battery in the bike whether you trickle charge it or not.
All the things that could happen if you take it out are:
1. You drop it.
2. You short out the whole bike.
3. You start a fire in the bike which burns down your entire house.
4. I could go on, but I won't.
I believe in "the law of unintended consequences" which always bites you in the butt whenever you think you are doing something good. A guy at my marina always took his instruments off the boat after every trip. No one had ever had anything stolen from the marina, but he wanted to keep them safe. As the instruments were being carried to the boat one time, they were all dropped into the water by accident. A diver was hired at great expense to retrieve them and they were never the same.
Leave the battery in the bike whether you trickle charge it or not.
All the things that could happen if you take it out are:
1. You drop it.
2. You short out the whole bike.
3. You start a fire in the bike which burns down your entire house.
4. I could go on, but I won't.
Meowguy,
Just a bit more info you may or may not have read with your unit.
**The OptiMate’s high voltage desulfation mode cannot engage if vehicle electronics / wiring are sensed, so to effectively desulfate a battery, it must be disconnected from the vehicle wiring.
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Quote:Just a bit more info you may or may not have read with your unit.
Thanks for that. I looked it up and this is what I found.
The video from Tecmate [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LovQqnCn0as]Promotional Video Says nothing about disconnecting the battery from the vehicle to achieve continual desulfination.
The manufacturers owners manual says this:
"2. If the battery is deeply discharged (and possibly sulfated), it is essential to disconnect the battery from the
vehicle before connecting the charger for a recovery attempt. The charger’s special recovery mode cannot
engage if it senses that the battery is still connected to a vehicle wiring circuit which effectively offers a lower
electrical resistance than the battery on its own. However, if the deep-discharged battery is not removed for
recovery, neither battery nor vehicle electronics will be damaged."
[url=http://www.tecmate.com/pdf/TM151%20OptiMate%203+%20User%20Manual.pdf]Complete Techmate 3 Manual
So while it appears there is some truth to your statement, the real answer is "it depends". My situation is fine as I have it.
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(10-29-2013, 11:54 PM)Rboe_imp Wrote: If you live in a cold to very cold state in the winter; if the battery had a good charge and is in a good state (and it won't see twenty below) I'd just leave it till spring then recharge for the following reasons.
If you remember your high school chemistry chemical reactions like heat. Things not working so well? Add energy to the system with heat. Cool things off and chemical reactions slow down or stop. It's for this reason that batteries last so much longer up north than in Phoenix. The heat just cooks batteries down here. Standard car battery lives about 18 months (person experience) where as in Minnesota seven years is not unheard of.
I had one guy come into my parts department with this very small Yuasa battery for a dirt bike that was ten years old and was finally dead. No trickle charger, stored in the bike (you need to control the sulfate that forms on the terminals so you don't ruin the bike or cables) and otherwise treated with little love.
Now my way may not be the best way any more, but I'm not convinced a battery on trickle charge does it good for that long. At least in cold states. Warm states I'm all for trickle chargers as the battery will self destruct due to the heat keeping the chemical reactions going sulfating the battery.
I never pickled an engine for storage either. Parked her, charged it up in the spring and rode her. The cold kept things like rust at bay (just another chemical reaction). With todays gas with ethanol I don't think I could get away with that so Seafoam or Stabil would be used.
I must have been just plain lucky when I lived in Yuma, AZ for those 18 years. Vehicle batteries for me lasted 5 to 7 years! All depending on the size of the battery. My 1973 GMC pickup I owned for 10 years and that battery was replaced once just before I sold it.
Unless things have changed in the past 10 years since I was last living there...
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That is amazing! In Phoenix (and I would expect Yuma to be no better, maybe worse) car batteries typically don't go beyond two years unless you go with an Odysse or AGM etc.
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I get about 4 years out of a battery in my truck. Of course, it doesn't get driven every day in the heat. I usually ride one of the bikes.
Smaller batteries tend to suffer the most. My bike and airplane batteries max out at 3 years. This year I finally got around to swapping the lead acid battery in the plane for an AGM. We'll see how that goes.
