Battery replacement and battery case for 68 R69S

[martyp]

Need to replace the battery on my R69S. Tried a lithium battery and it melted the wiring harness. Any suggestions?

[20774]

Marty -

Welcome to the forum! I'll go to your other post in Airheads and delete that...this should be the better area for your question.

I've had several batteries in my R69S. The first one was a wet-cell and it lasted a dozen years...since the battery is not used to start the bike, it just needs to be kept charged. But I kept getting fuzz on the terminals and every 3-4 months, I'd have to take things out and use a baking soda solution to clean things up. Was a bit pain. So in the fall of 2018, I bought a battery from Vech at Bench Mark Works. I can't really tell who makes the battery...you can see the green writing in my picture. I also had to put some spacers below it to raise it up so the rubber strap is more effective at holding it in.

It is a maintenance-free battery so no more fuzz! But the issue is that the terminals are spade terminals and the wiring harness was designed with ring terminals. I went to a local electronics supply house and bought a set of quick release cables and a project box. I cut the cables in the middle and put ring terminals on one end and spade terminals on the other end. Inside the box, there's a terminal strip that I used to bring all the wires into for final connection. I secured the box to the top of the battery with a zip tie. So it's easy to pull the disconnects and extract the battery. It's also easy to remove the negative spade terminal if I want to do some electrical work and keep from hurting the battery.

NewBatt1.jpg