Re: [St] Hmm... toasty! ...and battery woes

[Gavin Lawrie <gavin.lawrie@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 29 Nov 2008, at 13:02, Eoin Kirwan wrote:

> I'm going to give my bike a weekend trickle charge for the rest of
> the winter at least. Unfortunately a long run at the weekend is not  
> an option
> at present :/ Battery is a genuine Yuasa 18 months old, the  
> electrical system
> checks out ok, and the bike is in use every weekday, year round.

I would think you've just got a knackered battery.  A couple of years  
ago I had similar problems - bike would start OK but battery would run  
out of puff quickly - more than once I ended up bump starting it.  Put  
battery on an Optimate III when it wasn't running, and so on.   
Optimate didn't report any problems, and reported battery was 'fully  
charged' in the mornings.  But turns out battery was the problem, and  
when I changed it, all the problems went away.  I was a bit surprised  
- I thought the whole point of the Optimate was to alert you to this  
sort of problem etc, but didn't do so in my case.  By look of the  
things you are thinking, you potentially could end up spending a lot  
of time and money and voltmeters and so on, and then change the  
battery...  I'm not an expert, but surely a voltmeter would only be  
useful when engine is not running - as when it is running all you see  
is the voltage provided by regulator (assuming your alternator is  
working OK), unless the battery had a dead-short within it, but then  
you wouldn't be able to start bike at all.  Unless you are completely  
over-rating your system with add on stuff (e.g. these lights etc.) -  
but you should be able to work out that by comparing peak output of  
alternator with total installed load.  If voltmeter is only useful  
when engine stopped, just borrow a multimeter and put it in a pocket /  
pannier to check battery terminal voltage when you are having problems?

Anyhow, good luck - hope you find a cure soon.
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