Left my ignition on all night...

Ugh. What a broke-dick move.

Battery dead, plugged in my Optimate 4 smart charger and keeping my fingers crossed...

Thoughts?

Like you are the first to do that?......Nope

You will be fine. Just don’t try to start with the Optimate connected.
OM

kunkies said:

Ugh. What a broke-dick move.

Battery dead, plugged in my Optimate 4 smart charger and keeping my fingers crossed...

Thoughts?

Click to expand...

What a moron...you don't deserve to be on this forum. Next you'll forget to set the stand when you park the bike and just watch it fall (no one would do that!!)-or only a real jerk would do THAT. You probably even downshifted when you meant to upshot a few times. And PLEASE don't tell us that you're one of those guys that didn't come to a full stop at a stop-sign, looked while you were stopping, braked while wheel turned and went into the end of pavement and couldn't hold the bike up as it sloooowly fell over- thereby justifying the cost of your Illium engine and luggage protection. You are clearly one in a million!

kunkies said:

Ugh. What a broke-dick move.

Battery dead, plugged in my Optimate 4 smart charger and keeping my fingers crossed...

Thoughts?

Click to expand...

1. My best guess is that the battery will take a charge and you'll be just fine.

2. Speaking strictly for myself, if that were to be the dumbest thing I did in any given year it would be the best year of my life.

rick601 said:

What a moron...you don't deserve to be on this forum. Next you'll forget to set the stand when you park the bike and just watch it fall (no one would do that!!)-or only a real jerk would do THAT. You probably even downshifted when you meant to upshot a few times. And PLEASE don't tell us that you're one of those guys that didn't come to a full stop at a stop-sign, looked while you were stopping, braked while wheel turned and went into the end of pavement and couldn't hold the bike up as it sloooowly fell over- thereby justifying the cost of your Illium engine and luggage protection. You are clearly one in a million!

Click to expand...

Rick
I think you were talking about me

Jim

t6pilot said:

Rick
I think you were talking about me

Jim

Click to expand...

Ummmm yeah, yeah that's it...you not me, really not me...it wasn't me...i didn't do that....

User error caused my battery to die once. I got a jump and went for a 150 mile ride to charge it up again. Went another 35,000 miles before I replaced it. I'm not even totally sure it needed replacement then, but it was my last chance for 1500 miles and it was preying on my mind. So rather than fret about it I bought a new one.

@rick601 - you left out stopping in 2nd gear thinking you'd shifted all the way down, and only realizing it you when you pulled out - uphill - and needed more clutch finesse than usual. Mentioning it for a friend...

Final update...

Thanks for all the words of encouragement. . . update; battery is back. Here's what I did

1. Plugged in OptiMATE 4 for full 24 hours,
2. Drove her to work, and back (I think there was a cold beer in there somewhere)
3. Plugged in OptiMATE 4 overnight
4. Came out this morning and the OptiMATE 4 had two green lights meeting fully charged and ready to go. Running 12.5V off, 14.3V running

I'll monitor, but I think I'm out of the woods for now.

kunkies said:

I'll monitor, but I think I'm out of the woods for now.

Click to expand...

Good to hear you're back on the road! Most batteries don't like to be drained like this, unless they're what's called deep cycle batteries. So, you'll be fine but probably the life of the battery has been cut somewhat. Hard to tell for sure, but expect it not to live as long as before.

Batteries are commodities like tires. They provide wildly varying experiences. I have left stuff on too long (key, gps, car glove box light, etc) more times than anybody should ever confess to. And have had both what seemed like full recovery and what was the the final throes of electrical death. I have also had "modern" VRLA (AGM, Gel, etc) go from seeming perfect health to instant death with one press of the starter button resulting in an audible "snap" from inside the battery case as an internal connector broke.

With BMW motorcycles (not sure about other brands) the trend is to make them tiny in an electrical sense. When I bought my K75 it had a 30ah (amp hour) battery. The "little" one that would also fit was 19ah. Voni's F800 came with a 14ah battery. Our 310s came with 9ah batteries.

The load on a battery is heaviest when cranking the engine to start and most of that load is on the compression stroke of each cylinder. So let's look:

K75/K100 250cc 30ah

F800 400cc 14ah

G310 310 cc 9ah

They accomplish this with gizmos (tech term) on the valve train to lower compression during starting.

But a huge point is that the tiny batteries BMW specifies for OEM use are small, fragile, and of low reserve capacity. I expect more, not fewer, battery issues in the future. The coming technology will be Lithium Ion or something newer of course once they actually figure out how to make sure they don't catch things on fire. 98% safe isn't safe enough for me.

@rick601 - you left out stopping in 2nd gear thinking you'd shifted all the way down, and only realizing it you when you pulled out - uphill - and needed more clutch finesse than usual. Mentioning it for a friend...[/QUOTE]

I think I read about someone doing that several times. Good one!

I didn't do it,
You can't prove it,
Nobody saw me do it,
The sheep are LYING!