Good job murdering your battery by leaving it on a charge for months at a time

Don't do that.


The #1 killer of batteries is the owners thinking they need to be on a charge for an entire season.


Yuasa batteries are very very good. If you ruined one of those you'd be playing with fire if you bought anything else.

 

Good job murdering your battery by leaving it on a charge for months at a time

Don't do that.


The #1 killer of batteries is the owners thinking they need to be on a charge for an entire season.


Yuasa batteries are very very good. If you ruined one of those you'd be playing with fire if you bought anything else.

Like I said, I am no pro at this so I was just following some advice on the internet like this one. I have a Battery Tender Jr. so I thought that wouldn't over charge it.
I bought another Yuasa. In order to not kill it this time. How long should I leave it on the tender over the winter? 1 week on 1 week off? Or just don't put it on at all?

 

You wouldn't leave your phone plugged in for 4 months would you?


If you take the battery out of the bike and store it in a cool place you might want to charge it for a few hours once or twice over the winter then top it up before starting the bike.


Batteries don't just go dead in a matter of weeks.

 

Its a tender right? Made by "Battery Tender"? I have a NOCO GENIUS 2. Leave it on 6-8 months. That's what they are made to do, right?

 

Yuasa is the premiere traditional battery, made in Japan (that I know of.) Every other traditional battery seems to be a % of how good Yuasa is, from close to far.

I've had two Shorai LiON batteries and liked them both. about 8 pounds lighter and the drain rate is super slow, which is great for my track bike that will see months of non use.

 

For Shorai batteries place the Shorai charger on them when not in use. Just leave it on constantly. Place into store mode and take the battery out of the motorcycle or disconnect. Shorai has two battery sizes for some vehicles.

Are you sure it is the batteries fault? I would check stator/magneto output and regulator before you get too far.

 

The store mode for shorai is only to be used when connected to a bike that drains the battery (has an alarm). Shorai says this clearly on their charger.


If there is no draw on the battery, lithiums have a shelf life of a year without charging. Take it out of the bike. Put it in the house. Install in the spring and you're good to go.

 

Get an EarthX or similar with a BMS on board, that will protect the battery from overcharging and over discharging, both killers of Li-Ion batteries and don't use a traditional battery tender, as Wibbly said, with no parasitic drain they can sit for a year with no problems. They're lighter and have a typical voltage of 13.2V which gives them a little extra grunt.

Li-Ion is great technology but needs to be understood, you can't just replace a lead acid with Li-Ion and treat it the same way and expect it to work, plenty try to use normal chargers which stuff them, dodgy Reg/Recs can ruin them with overcharging them and if you over discharge it it's easy to stuff it trying to bring it back. A Battery with the BMS eliminates most of the potential issues, if your bike fails and it drags too much current the battery open circuits to protect itself, same if the REG/Rec fails and pumps too much charge into it. With that in place as long as you don't use lead acid chargers on it you should be sweet for ages, and with storage times of up to a year without needing a charge there should be no need for that.

You get what you pay for though, not all Li-Ion offer the BMS, i wouldn't use one without it, The ETX-18F slots straight in with no need to modify a thing.

 

A decent battery tender won't kill your regular battery. A charger will though.
Tenders are specifically designed to be left connected, and the maintenance mode will monitor the voltage and top it up if needed, otherwise it does nothing.

I've used Motobatt AGM batteries for quite a few years now, and they've served me very well... until recently when my reg/rec failed and started to overcharge it, and then killed it so it would no longer hold it's charge.
Motobatts get good reviews and aren't too expensive over here either.

 

A decent battery tender won't kill your regular battery. A charger will though.
Tenders are specifically designed to be left connected, and the maintenance mode will monitor the voltage and top it up if needed, otherwise it does nothing.

This is exactly what I thought as well. Per Battery Tender's website, The Battery Tender Jr "Automatically switches to float / maintenance voltage after fully charging the battery." This would tell me that it will not overcharge the battery and kill it. However I feel like I should be getting more than 3 years out of a Yuasa battery. I bought another Yuasa. From now on I will store inside but off of the tender. I will only put on when volts drop and will see if this process helps extend the life of the battery.

 

i have seen many many batteries failed from tenders.


the most common post you see is "dead battery, no idea why i had it on a tender for 4 months"

it happens all the time. if your battery has no draw on it, it does NOT have to be on a tender full time. self discharge rates are low on modern batteries, all you need to do is top it up maybe once in the winter months, then again before starting. done deal.

if it's a lithium just unhook it and put it on the shelf.




there's absolutely no need to leave your battery connected to anything for storage. a tender is great if your bike has an alarm system that will draw down the battery when stored, this is what a tender is for. same as shorai's "store" mode.

 

a battery should last 8 to 10 years no problem.


tenders are designed to be used on stored vehicles that have a draw on the battery. they aren't designed to be attached to a battery that is sitting on a shelf doing nothing.

their claims suggest that this isn't an issue, but based on the number of posts you see about people who say "i don't know how it died, it was always on a tender" i'd suggest this isn't true.

 

Fair points wibbly. As with everything, you also gotta account for a lot of stoopid people out there who are possibly doing it wrong too... then moaning on forums about not reading the instructions properly and mixing 1 part vodka with 1 part distilled water and wondering why the battery won't hold it's charge for long enough to drink their martini
But in theory, yeah, if the battery is just sat on a shelf there's no reason it would excessively lose charge.

 

R Dub, did you end up getting the MMG battery? I'm thinking to get one.