BMW battery charger question - 2006 R1200RT

What is the normal operation of a gray BMW battery charger for a 2006 R1200RT? I?ve done the prescribe turn on procedure to connect it with the bike. The power light is green and error light is not lighted. All upper LEDs light up briefly and then the upper left LED is red. After some time the upper left LED starts flashing. Following this the 2nd LED will be on for awhile followed by the third LED. The 4th LED (upper right) may come on, but I?ve never seen it. After going through this sequence it reverts to the first LED which will flash red. Then it will stay on the flashing red LED. A check of the battery voltage indicates 12.7. Should the battery charger stay on the blinking red, or stay green on the right LED? The charger model number is 71 60 7 688 865. Thanks for any insights you may have.

Modern electronic chargers can be confused by excessively long cords that include multiple SAE plugs. If you have one, lose it.

Your battery may be funky (12.7 is not fully charged or even close)

Take your charger, bypass the socket, and connect direct to battery and let it run a day or so. The load test and you will know for sure.

I don't use any BMW charger- all I know of are either obsolete, overpriced, or both. I do know some of the early ones meant for CANbus had a lovely habit of not coming back on after a power interruption- which pretty much made them worthless for storage use.

Despite BMW warnings I do what almost all owners do- charge on circuit with a direct to battery connection, not through the ZFE. Though prblems are theoretically possible (like getting a lightning strike on your charger line the sends a blast at everything connected to the battery- in practicve I've never heard of anyone reporting a problem. Of course, a replacement computer is pretty pricey

Leo said:

What is the normal operation of a gray BMW battery charger for a 2006 R1200RT? I?ve done the prescribe turn on procedure to connect it with the bike. The power light is green and error light is not lighted. All upper LEDs light up briefly and then the upper left LED is red. After some time the upper left LED starts flashing. Following this the 2nd LED will be on for awhile followed by the third LED. The 4th LED (upper right) may come on, but I?ve never seen it. After going through this sequence it reverts to the first LED which will flash red. Then it will stay on the flashing red LED. A check of the battery voltage indicates 12.7. Should the battery charger stay on the blinking red, or stay green on the right LED? The charger model number is 71 60 7 688 865. Thanks for any insights you may have.

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Welcome to the forum Leo! This question come up quite frequently- really. I'm a fan of the direct connect Battery Tenders myself but you might as well use what you have.
Here are a couple of threads that may help.
Gary
http://forums.bmwmoa.org/showthread.php?30684-BMW-sanctioned-battery-maintainer
http://www.largiader.com/articles/charging.html

You didn't mention how the charger was connected to the battery, but mentioning the "prescribe turn on procedure" makes me think it is connected through the Accessory socket. If that is the case what you are seeing is all too common and indicates that the bike is turning the socket off, disconnecting the charger from the battery. I don't know why the bike doesn't keep the socket energized. The same thing happened with my '05 GS.... it worked for a while and then it stopped working for unknown reasons.

Directly connect your charger to the battery. That will likely resolve the issue.

Your battery may be funky (12.7 is not fully charged or even close)

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http://www.batterystuff.com/kb/articles/battery-articles/battery-basics.html disagrees with you if you assume that any surface change has been bled off the battery, first.

A picture is worth a 1000 words, here are four photos.

See the photos below for the four stages the battery charger is in. This is what my charger does.

Step one, during self test, first few seconds of powering up charger. All LEDs on.

Step two, charger just sitting there looking at the battery. Only power LED is on. This is still within the first few seconds.

Step three, starting at low charge, within 5 seconds of turning on charger. Only 0-1/3 LED is on (except power LED).

Step four and finally, full charge

This is the forth stage, two-thirds charged. Note, every few hours on my bike it (once it is fully charged, 3/3) it goes through the charge cycles starting back at 0-1/3. I never see any blinking lights with my bike (2012 R1200R) or my previous bike (2007 F800S). The F800 would do a different type of self test. The headlight would blink on for a second, then start at 0-1/3 and work back up to 3/3 (full charge). Last photo shows the full charge, 3/3 on.

On my 08 GSA with that same charger,my tail light blinks for a split second, and it starts the cycle all over again.

I use this charger on my '07 RT and FST. toooldtocare does an excellent job of illustrating what you should expect to see. Blinking red. Hmmm. Bad ground?

BMW battery charger question - 2006 RT

Racer 7 and Tooldtocare - I eliminated the extension cord and plugged it directly in the wall socket. When I did this the charger did go into the charging sequence moving overnight from step 0/0 to 3/2. However, when I checked it at mid-morning it had gone back to stage 0/0 with the LED blinking. I left it that way and checked at noon. LED 0/0 was still blinking red.

The manual says blinking 0/0 indicates the unit is in "de-sulphating mode with de-sulphating loops If de-sulphating succeeds and current flow is enforced through the battery, the main charge mode continues. If the de-sulphating fails, the charge is interrupted and 'error' appears." MY power light is green and the error light is off. I have left it in the de-sulphating mode and it has gone back to stage 0/2. And then back to 0/0 flashing.

This is the same result that I had before I plugged directly into the wall, but with it plugged directly into the wall it spent more time in time in 0/1 and 0/2.

BTW I'have the charger plugged into the fairing accessory port and do the four step turn-on, handshake, process. I have also tried just plugging it in the wall, then bike with out the handshake. It did now work.

I used this charger last winter with no problems this R1200RT. I'm thinking the charger now has a defect or the canbus/bike computer system is not communicating properly with the charger. Any thoughts, I'm about to buy another charger - any suggestion on what to buy. Thanks to everyone who has commented. Leo

My dealer (Gateway BMW) suggests the CTEK chargers. http://smartercharger.com/ I don't know much about them since I don't own one. But, my bike came with a CTEK pigtail installed. They put one on each of their stock bikes so they can charge them while they are on the show room floor. The pig tail has LEDs on it that tells the condition of the charge. Red, really low. Yellow, weak, needs charging. Green ok. They walk by the bike and look at the LED, if red or yellow, they plug in the charger. They are not CANBUS though.

On another note, I believe reading that the BMW CANBUS charger uses the bike's computer to monitor the battery. That is, the charger only supplies voltage and current to the bike, the bike controls when it comes on and goes off. This seems to play out too, because the charger performs differently on various models. I don't know though.

Wayne

Leo,
It might help if we knew what battery you are using, its age, any other possibly related electrical system changes that have been made, etc.

wezul said:

I use this charger on my '07 RT and FST. toooldtocare does an excellent job of illustrating what you should expect to see. Blinking red. Hmmm. Bad ground?

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Expect to see when everything is working. However, it is VERY easy to get thing to not work. Adding an electrical farkle of some form is often all it takes. I do not know if it is the charger that is overly picky, or the bike.

Leo said:

BTW I'have the charger plugged into the fairing accessory port and do the four step turn-on, handshake, process. I have also tried just plugging it in the wall, then bike with out the handshake. It did now work.

I used this charger last winter with no problems this R1200RT. I'm thinking the charger now has a defect or the canbus/bike computer system is not communicating properly with the charger. Any thoughts, I'm about to buy another charger - any suggestion on what to buy. Thanks to everyone who has commented. Leo

Click to expand...

My guess is not communicating properly... My solution was to remove the powerlet type plug from the charger and replace it with an SAE style plug. I plug that into an SAE pigtail that is connected to the battery through an always hot fuzeblock connection. The charger works quite well in that mode. Prior to changing the way the charger connected I was seen the exact symptoms you report, albeit on a GS instead of an RT.

BTW: it is a BMW gel battery installed by my dealer about 18 months ago.

Also, as far as electrical farkles, I have PIAA driving lights, Hyper-lites for the brakes, and a Garmin wired into the GPS cambus circuit. The Garmin was added this year, but is not presently on the bike. Leo

If the Garmin IS on the bike (and you noted it isn't) - it is on the same ZFE circuit that the accessory outlet is on, and some automatic chargers will refuse to turn on if they see the GPS there. Wonder if the charge circuit for the GPS might be causing a problem.. disconnecting it would give you an answer.

One note - the Accumate charger does several things that I suspect the BMW charger may do (but Accumate almost tells you about them)

1 - It turns on the accessory outlet without a need to cycle the ignition. You plug it into the accessory outlet, then into the wall and it turns the accessory outlet on and keeps it on (and the GPS if you have it installed via the factory GPS outlet/plug.)

2 - If used in direct mode on the battery - it may not work at all if it detects other electronics connected to the battery. It has two modes of operation (switchable) - one for charging through the accessory outlet, the other for charging directly to the battery. In the desulphate mode - direct connected - it's capable of putting > 15V (pulsed - part of the desulphate process) into the battery - so it won't turn on if it detects anything connected to the battery - so it won't damage other electronics. It will not do the desulphate process via the accessory outlet (when in "CanBuss" mode for the same reason.)

BTW - the headlight (or taillight) blinking? That may be a voltage retention test done when it completes charging (think of it as a "load" test of sorts) - the Accumate does the same thing without blinking any bike lights - it puts a small load across the battery after completing charging to see if the battery will "retain" the charge voltage for XX time. If it doesn't - it starts the charge cycle again (it can repeat this cycle for up to 48 hours - then if the battery doesn't "pass" it stops.)

All this discussion about the possible effects of other devices or connections to the accessory socket can be mooted: get a pigtail, and connect the BMW charger you already have directly to the battery. Then tell us what the LEDs say.

What Don says makes sense, that is, the CANBUS sees things not suppose to be there and shuts off. I have a Garmin wired to a BMW plug that I plug into the accessory port. I use it this way so the socket shuts off after I turn the bike off, and the Garmin powers down. If I forget to unplug the Garmin before I restart the bike, the bike will usually power the socket down and the Garmin looses power. The only way that I can guarantee that this will not happen is to unplug the Garmin from the accessory socket before I turn on the ignition key, start the bike, then plug the Garmin back in. It is a standard Garmin, not BMW's version. The CANBUS does not like seeing it during startup is all I can figure.

Wayne

3/3 Green now. I connected the BMW charger directly to the battery and everything seems OK now. Apparently the CANbus did not like the farkles, probably the GPS wiring. Thanks everyone for your help. Leo