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Am I killing my batteries?
- Thread starter nickrides
- Start date
Like Omega Man said, you either have a defective charger or a defective battery. If you swap the chargers and the constant red moves to the other battery, the charger is bad. If it stays with the same battery, the battery is bad.
A common failure of a battery is a shorted cell. That cell is constantly discharging the battery. That would cause a battery tender to never reach a fully charged state and the light would stay red. It is also dangerous to put a battery with a shorted cell on a charger as it can explode, so I would do Omega Mans test right away and if the battery is the problem, take it off the charger and out of the bike, have it tested further to determine what is wrong with it, and possibly replace it. A hydrometer will imediately show a bad cell in a wet cell battery. A volt meter will show unacceptable discharge over a week or so on any battery.
As an aside, you all getting more than three years out of a standard battery need to 
to the battery gods.
It wouldn't be such a big deal if the batteries were easier to get to and you could "jump" the bike. On the F800GS, the battery isn't fun to get at.
https://forums.bmwmoa.org/showthread.php?52968-My-battery-died-yesterday
OM
to the battery gods.It wouldn't be such a big deal if the batteries were easier to get to and you could "jump" the bike. On the F800GS, the battery isn't fun to get at.
https://forums.bmwmoa.org/showthread.php?52968-My-battery-died-yesterday
OM
pauls1150
MOA #24991, south of Los Angeles
Gosh, OM, that's awfully pessimistic...
As a bit of an aside, but still relevant:
Sometimes, I need to kill power to the garage. (I have motion-activated lights, and if it's windy, the local flora keeps the lights on.) I have a BMW charger, and I got curious as to what happens when I kill the AC.
These chargers, like many others these days, need a battery hooked up to their output prior to connecting the AC, so it can sense a load that needs topping off, before activating its charge routine.
I plugged in my charger to the main ride and left it a while, then just pulled its AC plug out of the wall socket; then disconnected the accessory plug from the bike.
I wanted to measure what resistance the charger presents to a voltage source, but I didn't want to accidentally blow out my DVM or VOM, so I momentarily put a short across the output plug to discharge the charger.
My VOM's reading varied depending on what scale I used - indicating that it was looking into a solid-state device.
With my DVM, I saw about 10K ohms ... fairly high, but still enough to pose a trickle of a drain to the battery.
Moral: If you need to kill the AC, or have an outage, disconnect the battery from the charger and re-initialize it.
As a bit of an aside, but still relevant:
Sometimes, I need to kill power to the garage. (I have motion-activated lights, and if it's windy, the local flora keeps the lights on.) I have a BMW charger, and I got curious as to what happens when I kill the AC.
These chargers, like many others these days, need a battery hooked up to their output prior to connecting the AC, so it can sense a load that needs topping off, before activating its charge routine.
I plugged in my charger to the main ride and left it a while, then just pulled its AC plug out of the wall socket; then disconnected the accessory plug from the bike.
I wanted to measure what resistance the charger presents to a voltage source, but I didn't want to accidentally blow out my DVM or VOM, so I momentarily put a short across the output plug to discharge the charger.
My VOM's reading varied depending on what scale I used - indicating that it was looking into a solid-state device.
With my DVM, I saw about 10K ohms ... fairly high, but still enough to pose a trickle of a drain to the battery.
Moral: If you need to kill the AC, or have an outage, disconnect the battery from the charger and re-initialize it.
As an aside, you all getting more than three years out of a standard battery need to
It wouldn't be such a big deal if the batteries were easier to get to and you could "jump" the bike. On the F800GS, the battery isn't fun to get at.
https://forums.bmwmoa.org/showthread.php?52968-My-battery-died-yesterday
OM
Made me laugh as this thread took out H’s 1150 battery it seems
In rotation on chargers if not ridden weekly and even after attempting two revivals yesterday and today just get the dreaded click- click-click. Hiding under full tank of course.
Ordered a new one a few minutes ago... lasted five years though
Made me laugh as this thread took out H’s 1150 battery it seems
In rotation on chargers if not ridden weekly and even after attempting two revivals yesterday and today just get the dreaded click- click-click. Hiding under full tank of course.
Ordered a new one a few minutes ago... lasted five years though
Sorry Steve
Got me to thinking how many batteries I’m trying to get the most life out of here. From group 31’s to the little (just replaced) battery on the TW-200, it looks like 20.
OM
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