Hi guys, The bike has been left in the garage untouched for the past few months and since the garage has no electricity, there’s been no trickle charging. I went to use it today and the battery is so dead that the electric LCD display didn’t even flicker upon turning the key. I have ran an extension cable to the house and plugged it into a trickle charger and it’s been going for nearly a whole day. Just went to see if anything has happened but still nothing.......screen won’t even register. Do you think I should keep the trickle charger going for another day or two, or maybe try to jump start it off the car? Or is the battery toast and needs replacing? It’s a 2014 bike so reasonably new battery. Thanks as always for your advice. Martin
Battery's had it. With some, once they're dead, they're irrecoverable - sort of like people. No matter how long you charge it, if it's given no signs of life after the whole day (assuming the connections were made correctly) it will not come back. Before buying a new battery though, check the main fuse - just in case, because it does seem unusual that you get no dash flickering even after the whole day's charge.
trickle chargers don't normally cope with deeply discharged batteries. My car battery for some unknown reasons had discharged after 3 months in storage and neither my ctek no accumate would revive it. I checked the voltage and it was 2v! I hooked up an old fashin car charger which brought it up to 9v at which point I was able to use my cteck. The advantage od lead batteries is they can take a lot of abuse. MEasure the terminal volts and if it is less than 2v, disconnect the battery completely and try a normal charger but limit the current to less than 10A. You may get lucky
You may get lucky and revive the battery by charging it with a proper battery charger. If it's completely dead as you say the chances are it won't come back to 100% capacity.
Nothing would happen on the dash regardless of whether the key was in the ignition or not. Today I tried to jump start the bike today off the car and it fired into life. I kept it running and then took it up and down the motorway for about 90 minutes, and when back I plugged it straight into the trickle charger in the hope that the jump start and ride had put a base level of charge back into the battery. Seems to be taking a charge now from the indications on the trickle charger but fingers crossed! I am starting to consider one of those small portable machines to jump start a battery rather than go through the hassle of connecting to a car. This isn’t the first time I’ve had issues with my battery and I doubt it will be the last.
For the price of a new battery I would go with that! My battery done the same, was 2 years old and just died. Unfortunately I hadn’t realised until the first track day of the year, so jump started and done a full session screaming the nuts off it and came back in turned off, tried to turn on and not even a dash light! Bought a new battery at the track and fired up straight away! Get a new battery save yourself the hassle and in future maybe take the battery out and plug it into a trickle charger in the house if you aren’t using the bike for a while
solar charger is the best way. especially if you have alarm systems on the bike, just plug in and forget, mine has always been charged and never lost a battery
