I've owned this bike (88 Honda Shadow) since 1990. Without fail I've
had to replace the battery every 3 years (not so unusual I take it).
Last year I replaced the battery with on from Walmart and it worked
fine throughout the season.
When the season was over I took the battery out and stored it in the
basement (on a block of wood). This season I charged the battery up
and put it in the bike. I started the bike up. As usual for the first
start of the season it took quite a bit of cranking but the battery
remained strong the entire time.
I let the bike warm up for about 10 minutes and then took it for a ride
up and down the street. I got back home and turned it off. I then
immediately tried starting it again and I just got that annoying
clicking sound. The engine would not turn at all.
I put the battery back on the charger and could see from the meter on
the charger that the battery was drained but it charged righ back up
quickly (like 10 minutes). It then started right up. I let it run for
5 mins and then turned it off and then tried staring it again - same
deal.
Seems like the battery is being drained while the bike runs. Anyone
know what might be causing this?
Usually when a battery goes dead it won't charge enough for the bike to
start. That is not the case this time.
Regards.
deja@homerlex.mailshell.com posted in rec.motorcycles.tech:
> I've owned this bike (88 Honda Shadow) since 1990. Without fail
> I've had to replace the battery every 3 years (not so unusual I
> take it).
Not uncommon. My 1985 Sabre would kill a battery in two years.
> Last year I replaced the battery with on from Walmart
> and it worked fine throughout the season.
Get a sealed battery next time. They last longer.
> I let the bike warm up for about 10 minutes and then took it for a
> ride up and down the street. I got back home and turned it off.
> I then immediately tried starting it again and I just got that
> annoying clicking sound. The engine would not turn at all.
>
> I put the battery back on the charger and could see from the meter
> on the charger that the battery was drained but it charged righ
> back up quickly (like 10 minutes). It then started right up.
Sounds like the bike's charging system is dead, and not charging the
battery.
> I let it run for 5 mins and then turned it off and then tried
> staring it again - same deal.
Most bikes won't recharge the battery while idling. The engine's
not turning fast enough.
> Seems like the battery is being drained while the bike runs.
> Anyone know what might be causing this?
If your charging system is dead, simply running the bike will drain
the battery. A repair manual will tell you how to test the charging
system.
--
Michael J. Freeman mike_freeman@SPMBLOKmac.com
'99 GSF1200S (The Evil Bandit) Cincinnati, OH, USA
"Insanity runs in the family... it practically gallops"
d...@homerlex.mailshell.com wrote:
> I've owned this bike (88 Honda Shadow) since 1990. Without fail I've
> had to replace the battery every 3 years (not so unusual I take it).
> Last year I replaced the battery with on from Walmart and it worked
> fine throughout the season.
Walmart can sell you that battery for about $20 to $25 because it's a
cheap Taiwanese battery and they buy them by the ton. Do yourself a
favor and buy a Yuasa sealed maintenance free battery. It may cost
twice as much as a Taiwanese battery, but it will last three or four
times as long... :-)
The original equipment Yuasa maintenance free battery on my Yamaha
FZR-1000 lasted *eight* years. The original equipment Yuasa "sulf-stop"
battery on my Suzuki GSXR-750 lasted *five* years... :-)
> When the season was over I took the battery out and stored it in the
> basement (on a block of wood). This season I charged the battery up
> and put it in the bike. I started the bike up. As usual for the
first
> start of the season it took quite a bit of cranking but the battery
> remained strong the entire time.
There's an old wive's tale that says a battery will discharge if you
set it on a cement floor. The battery would have to be wet on top and
down the side and the floor would have to be wet too for the battery to
discharge...
If you set a battery on a *cold* cement floor in a room that gets down
below freezing, that will reduce the cranking capacity of the battery.
If you're going to go to all the trouble of removing the battery from
the bike, at least store it inside your house where the temperature is
comfortably warm for you. Your battery will last longer...
If you ride a motorcycle with a vented battery that has a hose that
dumps "water" out under the bike, that's not all water that's going out
through that hose. Some of it is acid... :-(
Even if you know your charging system is working just fine, and you go
out on a long ride and get home and take the battery out to store it,
and you look and see that the "water" level is low and you add
distilled water to the battery because that's what "everybody does",
you're not doing your battery any favors... :-(
If you check with a hydrometer and your battery electrolyte shows that
the
battery is fully charged, you're supposed to add *electrolyte* to the
battery, NOT *water*...
Yeah, yeah, I know, "everybody" says you shouldn't add *acid* to a
battery that's low on "water". Electrolyte isn't ACID, it's a 50/50 mix
of
sulfuric acid and water, and you can buy a gallon of it from an auto
parts store for a few dollars and have more than you'll ever need...
You would have to hide it so the kids didn't find the box of acid and
try to drink it...
The reason the maintenance manuals say you should never add ACID to a
battery is because it's too dangerous, it requires special training to
handle pure sulfuric acid. Pouring WATER into ACID makes the water
boil, and it will splash in your face. Pouring ACID into WATER isn't as
dangerous, but if you splash pure sulfuric acid on your skin and try to
flush it off with water, your skin is going to get HOT fast, you'll get
chemical burns and you'll be scalded at the same time... :-(
Battery electrolyte isn't ACID, as I said before. The battery companies
don't want the liability. So they don't tell you the right way to
maintain your battery. It's in their interest for you to replace your
battery every two years anyway... :-(
Maintenance free batteries solve the product liability problem to a
certain extent. If you buy one and fill it up yourself, you will still
get a bottle of 50/50 electrolyte to pour into the cells from a special
dispenser, then you install the tight fitting cap and you're good to go
for several years. If you don't plug the special dispenser directly
into your eye sockets, you should be perfectly safe...
I shopped around for a replacement Yuasa maintenance free battery for
my Yamaha. Sears tried to rob me for $90, so I drove out to the
Chaparral warehouse and bought the same battery for $50... :-)
But, back to this poor old motorcycle battery of your that showed it
was fully charged and you added water to the pitiful thing before
setting it on the shelf. You just made the electrolyte weaker by adding
water and that's the same thing as partially discharging the battery.
If you store a battery in a partially or fully discharged state, sulfur
from the acid combines with the lead in the battery's plates to form
hard lead sulfate... :-(
A sulfate is a salt or ester of sulfuric acid. What's supposed to
happen when you discharge and charge up a battery is that you have a
reversible chemical reaction. Sulfur goes out of solution when you
discharge the battery and back into solution when you charge the
battery. Your battery is forming lead sulfate all the time when you
discharge the battery, the charging system is just constantly reversing
the process, putting the sulfur back into the water...
But this hard lead sulfate crap plates itself onto the spongy lead
plates when you let the battery sit in a discharged condition and the
electrolyte can no longer soak into the lead's pore so the plate area
becomes minimized. When charged, the battery only gets a "surface"
charge.
It becomes more like a capacitor than a battery, you can only draw
current off the surface of the plates, not from deep down inside
them... :-(
Before there were maintenance free batteries, there was "sulf-stop".
You'll see that logo on the side of non-maintenance free Yuasa
batteries and US companies that make Yuasa batteries here will also
have the "sulf stop" logo. Some sort of chemical reduces sulfation on
the plates when you
let the bike sit unridden after you've done it the dubious favor of
adding
distilled water to the poor battery...
> I let the bike warm up for about 10 minutes and then took it for a
ride
> up and down the street. I got back home and turned it off. I then
> immediately tried starting it again and I just got that annoying
> clicking sound. The engine would not turn at all.
Yup, you used up the surface charge on your sulfated battery...
> I put the battery back on the charger and could see from the meter on
> the charger that the battery was drained but it charged righ back up
> quickly (like 10 minutes). It then started right up. I let it run
for
> 5 mins and then turned it off and then tried staring it again - same
> deal.
You used up the surface charge again...
> Seems like the battery is being drained while the bike runs. Anyone
> know what might be causing this?
If you suspect that your charging system isn't working right, you could
check the charging voltage of the system while running the engine with
the lights on at a certain RPM. But the manual will tell you to do this
check with a fully charged battery in good condition. Your Taiwanese
Walmart battery is probably sulfated...
> Usually when a battery goes dead it won't charge enough for the bike
to
> start. That is not the case this time.
Been there, done that. Saw the little floating ball hydrometer float
all the balls. Read the voltage across the terminals, it was correct.
Installed the battery, turned on the key, never even got to
push the starter button. When the headlights lit up, the voltage
dropped below the power relay's "hold-in" voltage and the power relay
opened the main power contacts. Click...
So far as your hard starting problems every spring are concerned, you
need to learn how to start the engine without using the throttle, just
the "choke" that isn't a choke, and you need to store the bike with
gasoline stabilizer in the tank, and you need to know about Berryman's
B-12 Chemtool and how to clean out your idle jets by riding with a few
ounces of B-12 in a tank of gas...
I've described the process a few hundred times. Google up
"kaybearjr@aol +idle jets"
Good luck...
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> I've had to replace the battery every 3 years (not so unusual I
> take it).