Battery maintenance

Hi ,

Personally i think they are a good thing to have, many years ago i use to own a Ducati ST2 and the battery was always running down , owning a optimate would of saved me a nightmare of a job taking fairings off to get to the battery. I will be getting one shortly with the nights pulling in.

Andrew.

I had an optimate and it worked well and has brought a few dead batteries back to life. But if you fit a gel battery like a motobatt you can just forget it.

dan

Andrew:

Previously Dan Field wrote:

. But if you fit a gel battery like a motobatt you can just forget it.

dan

Looking at the website above then looking at the label on the battery you can clearly see "absorbed glass mat technology"....not the same as gel cell.

As I mentioned on the MKIII e-start thread.....IMO name brand "AGM" are good, however I've heard very mixed reviews on gel cell.

Here in the US we have "battery tender" and they seem to work well. Ive had one for well over 15 years.

Dave

All my bikes are magneto ignition, so batteries aren't such a problem. However, my wife has a seldom used Yamaha Diversion (an under-rated bike, but that's another story). Over the years, I have tried plugging it into an Optimate charger continuously, intermittently or not at all. I have also tried one of Lidl's excelent-value chargers intermittently. Regrdless, the Yuasa gel batteries all die in 15 to 18months. This trialhas now lasted 21 years... The best bet is to use the bike daily if you have the chance. Batteries like to be used.

I used an Optimate for a while but stopped using it because it packed-up! It was about a month out of warranty. I have bought a cheap replacement (circa £20); it works just as well and has lasted twice as long (so far). These chargers do seem to work well enough.