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Getting the most out of your motorcycle battery.
Kyle from Cruiser Customizing here with this week’s tip of the week on battery maintenance.
You ever walked out to your bike, whether it be in the garage, under the cover out in
the driveway--you take off the cover, turn the key, hit the starter switch: nothing.
It’s really not a fun situation.
Standard battery life is roughly 12-48 months with 30% of batteries failing right around
the 30-month mark. Did you know that the majority of battery problems come from either poor
or bad battery connections? Keeping your battery connections in top shape is definitely key.
The tip that my family’s been using for years, which is pretty much common practice
among the automotive world is a couple table spoons of baking soda and a pint of water
and a toothbrush. Scrub off the connections, make sure they’re clean--you might wire-brush
them a little bit. Put it back together, make sure the connection’s tight, and away you
go.
So what can you do to keep the build-up from happening?
Really simply, grease all the exposed wires and metal. Throw a little bit of grease over
it and that keeps the oxygen from oxidizing it as well as the vapors from the battery.
80% of battery failure is due to sulfation build-up. What is sulphation build-up, you
might ask. This build-up occurs when the sulfur electrolytes, or the battery acid, become
so discharged that they stick to the lead plates inside the battery. Too much sulfation,
too much coating, equals dead battery.
Most motorcyclists throughout the world aren’t able to ride year-round. I think that’s
a sad state of affairs, but for those of you have to keep your bike parked, parasitic drain.
I didn’t really know what that was until I started researching batteries a couple years
ago, but parasitic drain is a load put on your battery when the key is in the off position.
Engine management computers, radios, GPS, clocks, alarm systems--all of those types
of units allow draw whether the key is on or off.
Parasitic drain for today’s motorcycle is almost inevitable. With just about every bike
coming out now being fuel injected, running GPS, running alarm systems--so what do we
do? What is the solution? The solution is battery maintenance by using either a PulseTech
or a DelTran Battery Checker type unit.
So what do these units do?
These units are very unique. These units are nothing like the old triple charger you used
to have in the garage you used to put on the battery. The standard triple charger or battery
charger you’re going to get at Wal-Mart or Craigen or any of the like are simply on/off
switches. You plug them up to the battery, you flip the switch on, and it charges the
battery.
It doesn’t regulate the charge, it doesn’t turn the charge off when the battery’s full,
it just keeps charging. This is death for a motorcycle battery.
What makes these chargers different?
These chargers are automatic chargers built specifically to maintain batteries.
Battery Tender and Pulse Tech are two units on the market that are phenomenal. They’ve
really come a long way in the last several years. The DelTrain Battery Tender touts itself
as being an automatic charger, meaning when you plug it up to the battery, it’s going
to go through a full cycle charge. It gets the battery up to complete capacity, it then
shuts off and turns itself into a safe or float mode, which is a safe amount of output
voltage for your battery in a fully charged state.
Let’s talk about the Pulse Tech Extreme Charge. Pulse Tech touts a five-stage charging
system. When you first plug it in, it starts stage one, which is a battery evaluation.
It will cycle through the battery and tell you where your battery stands.
Take a look.
I’m going to plug it in and we show that we’re now in test mode, it’s now going
to cycle through, and after the test it deems that we have a 50% battery--over here it’s
showing us that it’s pulsing the battery as we speak.
Currently and we are currently pulsing this battery to bring it back to life.
So you plug it in, stage one, it does a test.
Stage two is a bolt charge--so right now it’s throwing as much power output to that battery
as it can to get it up to optimum levels. It then rolls into stage three which is an
absorption and saturation charge.
Stage four it goes into an infinitely variable float stage where it just maintains that level
of charge to the battery.
And stage five, this unit continually pulsates and charges to minimize the size of lead sulfate
crystals inside the battery.
So not only does it charge your battery, it knocks the lead sulfate crystals, makes them
smaller, so your battery retains life longer.
Both of these companies claim that using their units will extend your battery life 50-75%
and I’ve got to tell you, I am a testament to that.
My VTX 1300. It’s a 2003 and is running on the original battery today.
These products here will help maintain your battery, keep it in its top shape, and the
best part? You’ll know every time you straddle your motorcycle and hit that start button,
it’s going to fire right up.
And here we have the V-Twin battery tender. Check this puppy out.
Listen to the awesome sounds this thing makes when you plug your battery into it.
Who doesn’t love thes ound of a v-twin?
Thank you for watching this week’s Cruiser Customizing tip of the week. Until next week,
take care and ride safe.