Correct charger

What amp charger do I select to charge my new Odyssey PC680 battery? Will NOCO Genius 6/12 Volt, 3.5 Amp unit do the trick or should I use a lesser amp version?

The Odyssey website says to charge at a 6 amp rate, or at least it used to for a discharged battery. Typically an AGM that size would call for about 2 amps. I'd look at the Odyssey website.

Added: I looked at the Owners Info from Odyssey. It says:

"In order to achieve the full design cycle life of ODYSSEY batteries in cyclic applications the charge current must be a minimum of 40% of the battery’s 10-hour rating (column8 of the chart on page 7). Thus the minimum charge current for a PC925 battery in a cycling application is 10.8 amps (40% of 27Ah). "

For a PC680 this would be 6.4 amps minimum.

Thanks Paul.

If you are asking about the initial charge for a new Odyssey battery it's probably not needed. The manual says if the voltage is 12.65 or higher to just install the battery and go.

Look at page three here. http://www.odysseybattery.com/documents/US-ODY-OM.pdf

Some batteries require an initial charge but Odyssey says it's ready out of the box.

I bought a few of the CTEK 7001 chargers for those batteries. Recommended by Odyssey, small, quiet, and feature laden.

C-Tek

AntonLargiader said:

I bought a few of the CTEK 7001 chargers for those batteries. Recommended by Odyssey, small, quiet, and feature laden.

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Agree on the C-Tek reference. Great charger. Works great for my Odyssey 680.

K1300S DIN 4165/12mm Plug - Charging with CTEK 7200

Hi folks. I bought a CTEK 7200 for trickle-charging the '10 K1300S and it works fine clamping directly to the battery terminals, but there's also a DIN 4165 aka "BMW plug" which the manual (p. 126) says you can use with BMW chargers and that "the motorcycle's onboard electronics know when the battery is fully charged and the socket is switched off when this happens." I don't know what the CTEK 7200 (or for that matter the über-priced BMW charger) does if it senses no load, i.e. the socket is turned "off". Any EEs out there? Thanks.

It's not an EE thing so I'll venture to answer anyway. When the so called "CAN-Bus bikes" came out, the DIN sockets started being controlled by the chassis controller module, which limited the current (initially to 10A, then to 5A) and also turned them off when the bike is off. However, the bike "listened" electronically to the socket and would re-connect it if it detected a battery charger. The BMW charger sent the signal that the controller was listening for. I don't know what it was but I think it was pretty simple, like a pulse pattern and not some high-tech TCP/IP data packet or something. There was a certain sequence of operation in turning the bike off and connecting a charger but IIRC people had trouble with it a lot and it just didn't work well enough. They said that even if they got the bike to recognize the charger, once it shut off it never reconnected. I haven't though about this in years because so many people - or dealerships - simply rewired the socket to go straight to the battery.

This is Why We Come to "School"...

AntonLargiader said:

so many people - or dealerships - simply rewired the socket to go straight to the battery.

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Anton: Brilliant! Doing it the old-fashioned way, connecting the charging "cables" directly to the battery terminals, is easy and fast, and the CTEK 7200 (maybe all modern chargers) shifts to "trickle" mode when it senses the battery is full, so I've never worried about the BMW's "CYA" warning in the manual about not charging the battery while connected. (Were the battery completely exhausted, I would disconnect it before rehabilitating it at 6+ amps.) Rewiring the BMW DIN 4165 port directly to the battery sounds more reliable than negotiating the CAN-Bus sorcery and it will avoid repeatedly removing and reinstalling the battery panel and wearing out the fasteners. As I never use the accessory DIN port for anything else anyway, I'm not giving anything up.

Thanks loads for your fast reply and the education on CAN-bus. That explained all I wanted to know and some things I'd not even considered, too.

- Mark

BMW cautions against charging with a non-BMW charger while the battery is in the bike as a hedge against the possibility that the owner will hook up a charger having a desulphation mode. If such a charger decides that the battery needs desulphation it will start hitting the battery (and your bike's expensive electronics) with high voltage pulses.

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Desulfation

bmwroadsterca said:

BMW cautions against charging with a non-BMW charger while the battery is in the bike as a hedge against the possibility that the owner will hook up a charger having a desulphation mode. If such a charger decides that the battery needs desulphation it will start hitting the battery (and your bike's expensive electronics) with high voltage pulses.

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After reading everyone's input, here's what I've learned off-line this 'eve:

All the most popular "smart" chargers have a "desulfation" mode, including the BMW branded - CTEK manufactured unit and the Optimates. But their desulfation "high" voltage is delivered at low current. Some older "dumb" chargers do blast batteries to restore them ASAP, surely a hazard to our bike's onboard electronics, and thus BMW's warning. A lightning strike in the absence of, or which overcomes the IC protection of a surge protector, could have the same effect - even if using a "BMW-approved" charger.

Regarding CAN Bus charging: The CTEK 5 and Optimate 4, both CAN Bus-ready chargers, when hooked up via the BMW DIN socket, send out a periodic pulse keeping the circuit open. If they detect active electronics, e.g. a clock, GPS, etc., they will not shift into high voltage mode at all, even if the battery needs reconditioning. This is truly trickle charge-only battery maintenance useful only for otherwise fully healthy batteries.

Charger-to-terminals, using a "smart" charger - in my case, the CTEK 7200 - seems to me to satisfy the KISS criteria. Even better, ride long and often enough to render all this merely academic. Not really all that hard to do here in New Mexico with 350 sunny days a year. Maybe a bit more challenging up North in January....

If you don't deep cycle your PC680, riding it and using a Battery Tender Junior during longer periods of non riding will keep it happy.

Going on 9 years each on 2 PC680s. Just starting to get down to 12.6- 12.5 volts after a ride or when the light turns green on the Battery Tender JR. Probably will consider replacing this year, but maybe not, depending on load test results.

I believe the special charging directions refered to in the previous posts are for deep cycle use (cyclic). Motorcycle use is; start the bike and imediately recharge and maintain (with the alternator). The battery never gets discharged. A PC680 has extremely low self discharge (during non riding time). A Battery Tender JR has more than enough capacity to KEEP the battery topped off. Now if your battery somehow becomes very discharged (defective alternator, left lights on, left GPS on) that's a different story. You might need special charging. So don't let it become very discharged.

Thanks for all the input. I’m on my 4th battery on my 2016 RT. My respected tech at the Pensacola dealership believes it’s my BMW OEM trickle charger going through the canbus. I have since retired the charger to the tool box and will use it only on the unlikely event that I don’t ride my bike. And if I had to park the bike for more than a few days, I will attach it directly to the battery.

Reece, my 2014 is still on it's original battery. I can leave the bike unattended in my garage for 1-2 months without a charge and it starts fine (done this at least 2-3 times). I'd really suspect something else is going on there (4th battery already on your 2016). I'm definitely no EE but I'd consider asking the dealership to look at the charging system again and give you written values for it's behaviour and readings to make sure the charging system is working within specs.

Lots of short rides can also kill a battery especially if it has been sitting for any length of time. IIRC, Snowbum, Oak, or one of the other Airhead gurus identified that with the older far more marginal systems, it could take several hours of highway riding to get a half-discharged battery back up to 90% charge and longer for a 100% charge. My recollection is that it doesn't take much to get a battery back to 80% but, if I understood things correctly, that 80% is sort of a shallow and easily lost charge (being on the cusp of useability) and the closer you get to 100% the longer (exponentially) it takes to complete. Even on a robust system in a car it can take many hours of straight driving to bring a battery back to 90-95%. If it is always getting under-charged that should take a toll on it.

My old 2004 R1150RT had a PC680 in it for about 6-7 years just using the BMW charger no more than once a month during the winter without issue (the 1150 charging system is marginal for a PC680).

I have a number of bikes and a few chargers, BMW, CTEK Multi US 7002, and an old, old car charger only used on rare occasions for grunt. I move the BMW and CTEK chargers around on my bikes and typically don't bother with the RTW other than throwing the CTEK on it for perhaps a day once every 2 months or so during the winter.

Thanks Alan

Well, the good news, I haven’t paid for any batteries, as BMW warranties them for 24 months. I had my tech at Pensacola look over it, very carefully, he can’t find any problem with the charging system. My 05 RT suffered from the, “I need a trickle charger cuz all my trips are short commutes syndrom”. So I became a, “plug it in religiously after every ride” kinda guy.

David Peters, the service tech, seems to think the charger going through the canbus is pulling it down; creating a new, lower, max capacity point. Based on some of the conversation here, I’m leaning in that direction. This guy has never steered me wrong before. I just spent a week off the bike, cranked super strong on the new battery, no trickle charge.

Based on the previous track record, I’ll know one way or the other in less than 6 months.