Wow Bob... I went thru your gallery to see the battery setupCycleRob wrote:Using a (Deltran) Battery Tender Plus is a great way to extend your bike batterys' lifespan. After reading everything for years about M/C batteries and their care I came up with a way to GUARANTEE it gets a 100% full charge. After the Battery Tender shows a steady green light from it's overnight charge, I UNPLUG the AC power, wait 10 seconds and plug it back in again. That re-initiates the full charge cycle again, giving it the all important sustained charging time at 14.7 Volts which contributes the most to the full charge and proper chemical balance. I do it 2 or 3 times each time it is connected to the Tender, for 2 weeks at a time, the most, because of bad or freezing weather. It then gets hooked up to the rarely used pickup truck because here in Georgia winter is STILL the riding season, even for my old bones.
Cold weather and winter always reveals a weakened, over-aged or abused/neglected battery with a "no start". The frigid 50 weight oil dragging on 4" diameter pistons with their 10:1 compression ratio adds to the 1,100 Watt draw of the starter and all that literally overloads the normally diminished power of a very cold battery. Also add in the fact that the battery is partially sulphated from aging, a lack of proper off season charging and in season usage with the engine running. A new OilHead battery not taken care of and abused will only last 1 year. That very same battery fully cared for as if it were your favorite dog, will easily last SIX years! BTDT.
My F800 series bike has a reputation for having a very common SuddenDeathBatterySyndrome (SDBS) at anytime almost immediately after it's 2nd year of use. My on-board 3 LED voltmeter confirmed it was NOT a wiggy charging system - - - the voltage regulation was good except for the rare times at engine idle with the radiator fan and the brake light on. Since seemingly every replacement battery brand succumbed to this failure, my observation was that the top-of-the-airbox battery cavity it is mounted in has too much engine vibration transmission and engine heat associated with it for a good battery lifespan. Either one of those harmful environments are not good, but both of them together will give you those SBDS failures. The vibration was minimized with the early-on addition of a rectangular bottom panel of rigid closed cell shipping foam. This salvaged shipping foam is so rigid that standing barefoot on a single sheet of it, I could not feel the cement floor below. Click the link below to see the application:
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r87/ ... tFoam1.jpg
The engine heat transmission is minimized, not just by the supporting foam sheet, but by leaving the bike outside to cool off in the shade or parking in the shade while away. At 22,147 miles (35,642 km) and now being over 4 years 7 months old it was just checked, still unused for 3 days after being removed from it's Battery Tender Plus, at 12.68 Volts. We love our adorable 8 month old Jack Russell puppy (rescued last July 27 from the local Gainesville Humane Society) -and- I still care for my bike's original BMW brand battery.
Some pretty impressive improvements on your 800, were worth the look see
Nice work...
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