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Can battery be saved?


KWCFC
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Hey guys I've got a FZ6 in my garage which hasn't been used in a while. I'd been starting the engine regularly and letting it run for a bit to stop the battery going dead but I took my eye of the ball with it a bit recently.


Anyway the bike starts starts when connected to my car battery but will not start on its own. I'm unable to take it for a run-around to charge it up as the MOT has expired so possibly the issue is that I'm not giving it some revs once it's jump started?


I'm guessing a new battery is required but is there any equipment that is cheaper than a battery that can possibly charge it back up?

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you could try a trickle charger cheap enough at about £15, other than that a smart charger but cost is going up considerably £40 upwards for a decent one, make sure you get one suitable for motorcycle batteries, even if you have to get a new battery a charger is a worthwile investment anyway :thumb:

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trickle charger, if it don't bring battery back to life get a new battery, then you have a trickle charger so same wont happen to new battery :thumb:

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I recovered one a while ago using an optimate smart charger, as Dynax said though they're not cheap, see if you can loan one maybe. I keep my bike permanently plugged in to the optimate, never have any problems :thumb:

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Get one of these, I hav4e one for 2 years now and works a treat :thumb:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32914345141.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.1682409cC4I9qx&algo_pvid=187a9eea-39f7-4f9e-8470-453f2995769a&algo_expid=187a9eea-39f7-4f9e-8470-453f2995769a-17&btsid=0b0a0ad815921468847513976e3873&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_


It will repair the battery if it can be saved.

It works for both AGM and Lithium batteries.

Never used it as trickle charger because have an Oxford 600 that works to perfection and have a direct plug to the battery so no faffing around with the seat and covers

:cheers:

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Just to add that a totally dead battery will sometimes not take a charge off a standard charger. Smart chargers will "prime" it first with a very low current rate, under 500Ma, until the voltage across the cells is above 12v. So it's worth investing in a decent charger


I use CTEK chargers which have bet good. But Aldi do a cheap charger that says it will do pretty much the same.


Alternatively you can use a plug gel cell charger. I use a 400Ma one for saving batteries that won't take a charge off anything else.


Sometimes letting a battery go totally flat will kill it so you may well need a new one anyway. But unless you ride all year round you need to have a good charger in your kit.

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I've got one of these from Machine Mart . It seems to do the job . I kept my Harley's battery plugged into it all winter using a generic connector that I grafted onto the leads . It also worked well when I ran the battery down trying to start the bike after I serviced the carb . So it recovers and maintains for a fraction of the cost of an Optimate .

Screenshot_20200614-214411.thumb.png.4f698516ac41ea1a79e3fefe7baafe4f.png

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Thanks a lot guys.. Definately going to invest in a charger and then I've got one either way.


Thought I was being clever by just starting the engine and letting it run periodically... Obviously not as effective!

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Thanks a lot guys.. Definately going to invest in a charger and then I've got one either way.


Thought I was being clever by just starting the engine and letting it run periodically... Obviously not as effective!

 

Does work but you need to leave it running for about 15-20 minutes to replenish the energy lost by time drain and then the energy used to start the engine sufficiently and you need to alternate the revs during that period



Also check the electrolyte level is sufficient before attempting to charge .

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Thanks a lot guys.. Definately going to invest in a charger and then I've got one either way.


Thought I was being clever by just starting the engine and letting it run periodically... Obviously not as effective!

 

The charging system never fully charges a flat battery. Even after a long run the battery won't be at full capacity. So periodic trickle charging does them good.

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DO NOT start bike from a vehicle that is running, it will knacker your Voltage Regulator Rectifier.
Sorry. why? As long as the car's charging system is working properly it would be running at 14.7 volts. Same as a bike.

 

The charging system never fully charges a flat battery. Even after a long run the battery won't be at full capacity. So periodic trickle charging does them good.
It depends how long your ride is and how flat you battery was. If you can charge at 6A for 2 hours you will fully charge a 12AH battery. Obviously at tickover you might struggle .... and get bored.
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DO NOT start bike from a vehicle that is running, it will knacker your Voltage Regulator Rectifier.
Sorry. why? As long as the car's charging system is working properly it would be running at 14.7 volts. Same as a bike.


 

The charging system never fully charges a flat battery. Even after a long run the battery won't be at full capacity. So periodic trickle charging does them good.
It depends how long your ride is and how flat you battery was. If you can charge at 6A for 2 hours you will fully charge a 12AH battery. Obviously at tickover you might struggle .... and get bored.

Why never from a running car etc ..

Amperage for one .

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The charging system never fully charges a flat battery. Even after a long run the battery won't be at full capacity. So periodic trickle charging does them good.
It depends how long your ride is and how flat you battery was. If you can charge at 6A for 2 hours you will fully charge a 12AH battery. Obviously at tickover you might struggle .... and get bored.

 

Modern charging systems never fully charge a flat battery no matter how far you ride. The old dynamo systems used to, but modern systems don't. In the days when we were allowed to mess about with the acid inside batteries, until Nanny State decided we were not to be trusted with such things (which to be fair given the way some people behave is not an unreasonable point of view) - you could use a hydrometer to check the specific gravity of the electrolyte. Just running the engine got the charge nowhere near full capacity.


You did however always drop acid onto your jeans so creating a design younger people would have to pay a lot of money to obtain.


If you have a flat battery running the engine will charge the battery, probably enough for it to fire the engine so all seems tickety-bo, but the battery ain't nowhere near it full capacity.

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  • 3 months later...

Slightly off-topic ish, but instead of a new thread, how much output should a trickle charger kick out?

I've put the multimeter on it and the reading was like 0.04v set. the setting was 2v. almost nothing coming out. But im curious if it doesnt work that way

the charger is on and lights say battery ok etc.

the mrs bike not mine..

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Slightly off-topic ish, but instead of a new thread, how much output should a trickle charger kick out?

I've put the multimeter on it and the reading was like 0.04v set. the setting was 2v. almost nothing coming out. But im curious if it doesnt work that way

the charger is on and lights say battery ok etc.

the mrs bike not mine..

 

The only way you could get 0.04V is if the chager wasn't connected to the battery when you took the measurement because if the charger was connected to the battery, even if the charger wasn't doing anything you would have seen battery voltage of about 12.6V so it must not have been connected to the battery. Measuring the voltage across a charger when it's not connected to a battery isn't a valid test because some chargers won't do anything until they're connected to a load. If you want to measure the charger voltage you have to connect it to the battery. You should see a voltage above 12.6V when it's connected. That shows that the charger is charging the battery but it doesn't tell you how fast it's charging. You would have to do a current test for that.


 

I think how a trickle charger works is it senses the batteries discharge rate and sends the appropriate voltage required. Rather than say sending out a constant 2 volts

 

I think you're getting voltage and current mixed up. You could say it sends current but you can't say it sends voltage. That doesn't make sense. The charger voltage will always be higher than the battery voltage. It has to be higher for current to flow from the charger into the battery. When it goes onto trikle charge it reduces the current down to a very small amount not the voltage. The voltage will always above battery voltage. Trikle charge just means charging with a small current.

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@WD-40


That's what I meant, honest!! :oops:

 

Here's my basic explanation of electricity. It might clear up voltage and current for you. I think it's right but do your own investigating. Electricity is all about electrons and the flow of electrons. Atoms have positive charges at their center called protons. They have negative charges called electrons orbiting around the positive protons. Under normal conditions the atom has an equal number of positively charged protons and negatively charged electrons so the two balance and there is no net charge, the atom is neutral.


If the atom gains energy through light, heat, magnetism etc, the outer most electron can gain enough energy to leave it's atom and join another atom. Remember the electron has a negative charge so the atom that lost the negatively charged electron now has more positively charged protons than negatively charged electrons so it becomes positively charged. The atom that gained the electron now has more negatively charged electrons than positively charged protons so it's now negatively charged.


Atoms always want to get back to a neutral state so an attractive force is created between the two atoms that draws them together. That attractive force is Voltage. So Voltage is a force create between two areas of different charge. That's why when you measure Voltage with your multimeter it's always between two point. You're measuring the difference in charge between the two points. An example would be a battery. The positive side of a battery is positive because it has a lack of electrons. The negative side is negative because it has an excess of electrons, so a voltage is created between the two terminals. Current then is just the continuous flow of electrons. Resistance is the opposition to the flow of electrons. There's lots of videos on youtube about it.

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Guest Richzx6r

@WD-40


That's what I meant, honest!! :oops:

 

Here's my basic explanation of electricity. It might clear up voltage and current for you. I think it's right but do your own investigating. Electricity is all about electrons and the flow of electrons. Atoms have positive charges at their center called protons. They have negative charges called electrons orbiting around the positive protons. Under normal conditions the atom has an equal number of positively charged protons and negatively charged electrons so the two balance and there is no net charge, the atom is neutral.


If the atom gains energy through light, heat, magnetism etc, the outer most electron can gain enough energy to leave it's atom and join another atom. Remember the electron has a negative charge so the atom that lost the negatively charged electron now has more positively charged protons than negatively charged electrons so it becomes positively charged. The atom that gained the electron now has more negatively charged electrons than positively charged protons so it's now negatively charged.


Atoms always want to get back to a neutral state so an attractive force is created between the two atoms that draws them together. That attractive force is Voltage. So Voltage is a force create between two areas of different charge. That's why when you measure Voltage with your multimeter it's always between two point. You're measuring the difference in charge between the two points. An example would be a battery. The positive side of a battery is positive because it has a lack of electrons. The negative side is negative because it has an excess of electrons, so a voltage is created between the two terminals. Current then is just the continuous flow of electrons. Resistance is the opposition to the flow of electrons. There's lots of videos on youtube about it.

 

Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me :popcorn:


I on the other hand believe it to be magic and wizardry.......

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