battery

[MIKE550/4]

hi all again

if a bike has been laid up all winter, battery disconnected, does not using the battery cause it damage

gave it a good top up , fully charged it up but nothing when put back onto bike

any tips apart from buy new battery

[UK Pete]

Some of the cheaper chinese batterys, are very fussy and need a constant use or at least a trickle charge , or the power zaps right out of them and when totally drained they quite often dont recover, alot of the chargers these days have a battery recovery mode which can sometimes salvage a severely drained battery,
Pete

[matthewmosse]

Optimate or similar charger with desulphate function is a well worthwhile invsetment. Other trick if that fails connect it to a good car / bike battery (jump leads pos to pos and neg to neg) then charge the good battery Saved my wifes 250 battery from the skip this winter.

[Bryanj]

What you need is a variable output DC voltage supply and wind the volts up till the battery takes some current BUT you need to keep a very close eye on it for at least the first 1 1/2 hours

[SteveD CB500K0]

Or buy an Optimate (or similar) which is more-or-less what they do.

... but you don't have to watch them 

[MIKE550/4]

i have one of these optimate chargers, put it on yesterday and red light has stayed on when first connected , which i have read as fully charged
left it charging for about 3-4 hours put back on bike and nothing ?

is 3-4 hours long enough


what exactly is this desulphication ?

[matthewmosse]

for an optimate the red lights indicate desulphating, orange is charging and green is good to go (at least on mine) It can take a day or more to do it's thing.

[SteveD CB500K0]

... and it may need more than one cycle. If/when you get a green light, disconnect the battery and reconnect again. You'll probably find it goes staright back into desulphate mode.

Keep going. It may take a while.

Mine has resurrected more than one old battery via this route.

[MIKE550/4]

ok guys cheers

will put it back on