Posted on March 13, 2006 12:25 PM by chadley
This Saturday the weather was beautiful. I was really looking forward to getting some stuff done outside. Some weekends I’ll spend the entire day inside, staring at a computer monitor or a TV screen, and then I’ll feel bad at the end of the day when I notice the sky getting dark.One of my missions for this weekend was to get my motorcycle ready for the season. I brought the battery up from the basement, where I had it hooked up to a 1amp trickle charger. I had some worries that the battery was dead. I took it out of my bike for the winter, but winter came early this past year. We had some unseasonably cold temperatures in November and I was worried that I failed to get the battery out before the cold weather killed it.
I put the battery in the bike, and hooked up the cables to the terminal posts. I turned the key to ON and got absolutely no sign of life. Usually, if there is some juice left in the battery, I’ll see some lights come on. There’s never enough juice in the battery to start the engine after months of inactivity, but the lights indicate that the battery isn’t beyond help. Unfortunately I didn’t see any lights, however dim, this time, meaning that the battery was probably toast. Using jumper cables, I hooked up the battery in the motorcycle to the battery in my truck.
After a while, I got the bike started using the jumper cables. I put the seat back on, grabbed my helmet and took a ride. I only went about 3 miles down the road and turned around. On the way back, I pulled in the clutch and hit the kill switch, then put the kill switch back on RUN, and tried to use the starter to start the bike as I coasted down the street with the clutch in. When I hit the kill switch, once again I got no lights on the minimal display that my bike has. The battery was completely dead, not taking any kind of charge during my short ride. Unfortunately, when I released the clutch I must have been in too high of a gear or not going fast enough because the bike didn’t even start back up on compression. I ended up pushing it back for the last couple blocks to my house.
Later that day, Angela and I stopped at the bike shop and I purchased a new battery for about $40. They fill it with electrolyte for you and you have to charge it when you get it home. When we got back I put the battery on my trickle charger for a few hours. Angela went up for a nap, so I went out to check on the battery. Usually when I am charging a battery, I see little bubbles rising to the top through the semi-clear casing. I didn’t see any bubbles so I started to wonder if my fairly old charger was also dead. I drove down to the nearest Advance Auto Parts store and bought a new trickle charger for about $30.
When I got back to the house, I put the battery on the new charger. The new charger actually had indicator lights to let you know what it was doing, and when I hooked the charger up to the battery, it actually said that the battery was CHARGED. I installed the new battery in the bike and it started right up. I took the bike for a little ride and everything seemed cool. I ended up taking the new charger back for a refund since my old one still works.
The moral of this particular story is:
Take the battery out of the motorcycle before it gets cold enough to kill it, and before you give up the ghost on your charger, check the battery.
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Tags: Motorcycles