maintain multiple batteries during winter

[scubatech]

I was really trying to be considerate, lazy and cheap. I have a friend with an industrial business who has offered to let me store my bikes in his place. I don't want to bug him too much over checking the batteries. If the storage location is heated, how often during the winter would I have to drop in and change which battery was on the tender?

Depends on how many bikes you need to maintain. You should probably move it about every other week if just two bikes. That would be safe.

But in your case (remote storage) I'd pop for an extra tender. They're pretty darn cheap. Time is money... etc.

I am in this group too. Seems to me that it most duplicates normal usage of driving and parking the vehicle,keeping the charge moving up and down. I think this is one of those debates that never will have an ideal answer.

 

[Constant Mesh]

If your FJR is going into hibernation for awhile one might pull the Backup fuse to minimize battery discharge. The 1.5 to 2 milliamps discharge through the Backup fuse would be interrupted and the battery would remain adequately charged for many weeks.

You'd rarely need a freshening charge with all the drains zeroed out.

 

[RaYzerman19]

If your FJR is going into hibernation for awhile one might pull the Backup fuse to minimize battery discharge. The 1.5 to 2 milliamps discharge through the Backup fuse would be interrupted and the battery would remain adequately charged for many weeks.

You'd rarely need a freshening charge with all the drains zeroed out.

Be aware a battery will discharge on its own with no loads applied.... No one recommends leaving it more than a month without a top off charge. You might get away with it for a while, but you are on the deterioration path........

 

[olderNOTwiser]

To get the longest life out of this type of battery is it better to let it discharge a bit and recharge (would this simulate normal - un-stored - use) or remove all possible drains and just top it up occasionally? And is it any different from the old unsealed battery from my SRX. I have not been getting great life from those.

 

[Willie]

I was really trying to be considerate, lazy and cheap. I have a friend with an industrial business who has offered to let me store my bikes in his place. I don't want to bug him too much over checking the batteries. If the storage location is heated, how often during the winter would I have to drop in and change which battery was on the tender?

Why not remove the battery and take it home and have your way with it at home...The bike is in storage and not expected to move around right ??

Willie

 

[FJR919]

To get the longest life out of this type of battery is it better to let it discharge a bit and recharge (would this simulate normal - un-stored - use) or remove all possible drains and just top it up occasionally? And is it any different from the old unsealed battery from my SRX. I have not been getting great life from those.

If I recall the conversation with the Yuasa engineer discussed in my previous post, batteries start to die when sulfation occurs. Sulfation starts when the voltage starts to drop. By keeping the batteries at optimal voltage, sulfation is greatly reduced; thus the longer life due to being connected to a tender when the motorcycle is not running. So to answer your question, discharging and charging is not better than a constant voltage being maintained.

 

[olderNOTwiser]

I was really trying to be considerate, lazy and cheap. I have a friend with an industrial business who has offered to let me store my bikes in his place. I don't want to bug him too much over checking the batteries. If the storage location is heated, how often during the winter would I have to drop in and change which battery was on the tender?

Why not remove the battery and take it home and have your way with it at home...The bike is in storage and not expected to move around right ??

Willie

If I pull the batteries and store them at home they'd be in my winter-cold garage. That seems to defeat having them with the bikes in warm storage.

Snow flurries forcast for tomorrow morning. hwell:

 

[Fred W]

If I pull the batteries and store them at home they'd be in my winter-cold garage. That seems to defeat having them with the bikes in warm storage.

MC batteries are small. Bring 'em inside somewhere nice and warm where you can give em some love all winter.

Don't you fellers have basements up dere in the GWN, eh?

Snow flurries forcast for tomorrow morning. hwell:

Oh c'mon. Not yet!! :angry:

 

[tractorford]

Take a look at the BatteryMINDer Mine keeps the battery topped off AND desulphates the battery too! They can be hooked to multiple batteries, but it looks to be a PIA to do so.

I agree the battery minder is the only way to go, I own five of them and some I have some on big equipment which stay on for over a year sometime before I use or start the machines. Battery Tenders I have owned one and they will boil a battery dry if you leave them on for weeks or months. The Battery Minder will bring an old battery back to almose new because it pulsates at 400 hz. rather than trickel charge. One battery minder is on my 65 Harley and the battery is more than 10 years old and still cranks the old gal up. Read about the battery minder on the web or you can order one from Northerntools for about $49.00

 

[olsonm3915]

MC batteries are small. Bring 'em inside somewhere nice and warm where you can give em some love all winter.

Why?

Cold is *good* for your battery- they self-discharge much slower when stored in the cold. Cold doesn't hurt batteries at all. The only time you have to worry about a battery getting cold, is if it is in a discharged state, because it will freeze. Otherwise, simply keep it topped up occasionally. In fact, AGM / VRLA batteries have such a small amount of self discharge that if kept in a nice cold garage, they will easily go all winter without needing a trickle charge at all. Conventional batteries should be given a top-up charge once a month or so just to be safe.

See the chart on page 32 of the PDF file (marked as page 30) showing how a VRLA battery stored at 0 C will retain 90% of its charge after six months of storage:

https://www.yuasabatteries.com/pdfs/TechManual_2009.pdf

I strongly recommend that anyone who has any interest in batteries and how they work, reads that entire manual, it's quite informative.

 

[ionbeam]

...Cold is *good* for your battery- they self-discharge much slower when stored in the cold.... if it is in a discharged state, because it will freeze...AGM / VRLA batteries have such a small amount of self discharge that if kept in a nice cold garage, they will easily go all winter without needing a trickle charge at all...

Yes, cold is good, it slows the chemical reaction between the acid and plates. Yes, discharged batteries can freeze which may damage the plates and can split the case. The FJR has a small quiescent current flow during normal use but during storage it will deplete the battery and expose it to the risk of freezing if the battery lives in an unheated garage where it gets cold during the winter.

 

[olsonm3915]

I haven't measured the quiescent current draw of my '07, but given how the battery held up fine during last winter's storage, I am guessing it is far less than a milliamp. I have a battery tender style SAE plug (fused of course) attached to the battery and plug in my Battery Doc (won it at a trade show) once a month or so- it always showed a green light immediately, telling me the battery was fully charged.

The point I wanted to make was that if you want to keep your battery in good shape, by all means leave it in the coolest place you can, and make sure it is fully charged. There is no need to leave a battery maintainer hooked up continuously, the quiescent draw of a stock bike's ECU and instrument panel (without an aftermarket alarm) stored in a cold garage is so low as to be insignificant when compared with the self-discharge which will occur from keeping the battery in a room temperature environment.

Bikes with accessories that draw significant current when "off" definitely will need periodic charging or a continuous hookup to a battery maintainer to avoid flat batteries- stories about this are very common in the UK where alarms or immobilizers are customarily required to reduce insurance premiums.

As someone else pointed out, not all battery tender/minder/maintainers are created equal, so choose your device with care to avoid boiling your battery dry. Knowing that my bike doesn't draw a significant amount of current when off, and keeping in mind the low self-discharge curve of VRLA batteries, I am confident that checking battery voltage a few times during cold storage, and charging it if necessary (usually it isn't) is a good strategy for long battery life.

When I sold my '01 SV650S in 2008, it still had the original VRLA battery in it, and despite having totally flattened it at least four times by leaving the heated grips on, the battery was fine, and I never charged it at all during winter storage, nor did I disconnect the battery from the bike.

 

[huron52]

My battery tender is used on two or three different bikes. Like as the most say here I move it from bike to bike and let them discharge a bit. For my brother's bike I disconnect the positive lead for the winter and charge at the battery. For mine I just back feed it through my powerlet port. After 6 years of doing it that way it still works.

Of course these bikes are just outside in the garage. If I had to store my bike where I won't see it for the winter I would put the battery and bring it home to the basement and charge it there.

 

[mr.paul]

I used to just throw my regular car charger on the bikes every month or so during winter and they did fine. The last few years I have used a Battery Tender Plus charger/maintainer that I have constantly attached to one of the 2 bikes with a pigtail on my Feej and a powerlet outlet on the ST. I just move the charger every couple of weeks. If I wasn't so cheap I might have individual chargers for each one. Both my current bikes, a '06 FJR and an '05 ST1300 have done quite well with this showing no signs of degradation. I don't believe the "battery tender will boil your battery dry" stuff as the ST has been almost constantly on a tender for the last 2 seasons (the wife hasn't been riding it. Yes, it is "her" bike) yet the ST will fire up and run fine. We rode it once this year after it not running for a year. It ran great and the battery started the bike normally during that day. If the battery were really cooked, I don't think that would have worked.

So this might be my laziness talking, but get a few Battery Tenders (new models, or Ctek's), plug them in and forget about it. They will be waiting for you when you get back. No harm done and fully charged and ready. And as for cold, it preserves a fully charged battery. It is heat that is the greater evil. So why bring it into a heated environment for storage?

In fact, yeah...cold is good for us! Yeah....that is why those of us in the northern tier are so handsome and virile....yeah, I'll go with that...

mr.paul from Minnesota