A follow-up on the discussion on smart battery chargers.
I decided to get the bike going yesterday and discovered that (again) I had
forgotten to disconnect the battery when I put it away last fall. This bike
has a radio with presets and draws a small amount of current and, as a
result, the battery was dead dead.
For kicks, I hooked up an old "dumb" charger and saw that it would not take
a charge, even after a couple of hours.
My "smart" Vector charger had blown up, so I couldn't try that one. So, I
headed for the store planning to get a new battery.
Instead, I discovered that Schumacher now sells a smart charger with an
automatic desulfate mode. It can be set for three battery types, including
AGM, and has a 2 amp slow charge, 12 amp and 25 amp charge settings. It
automatically detects if the battery needs to be desulfated and turns on
that mode during the bulk charge cycle. I decided to get it since I wanted
another smart charger. I think it was under 80 bucks.
I hooked it up to the dead motorcycle battery. There are selectable
displays to indicate percent of charge and battery voltage. My battery read
"6" and 2.9 volts. Not expecting much, I put the 2 amp slow charge cycle
on and noticed that the "desulfate" mode was automatically initiated after a
couple of minuites. I left it on overnight.
This morning, the charger was in the "charge complete float mode" and the
battery was at 13.8 volts and indicated 100 percent charged. Disconnected
the charger, hit the bike's start button and the bike fired right up.
Turned it off and restarted several times to confirm that the battery was
indeed fully charged and it started every time. By 5 pm, the battery was
still holding a full charge.
These things work. I'll bet there's a lot of batteries tossed out that
still have plenty of service life left in them.
Eisboch
www.eisboch.com