Battery Drain

[Weedhole]

My 2003 Venture has a problem with the battery going flat after it sits for around 12 to 14 days. The charging system is working fine. If I ride at least once a week, I never have a problem. But let is sit two weeks.... dead battery. I replaced original battery with an Odyssey brand recently and scenario is the same.

My brothers 2006 V-Max does the exact same thing.

Do any of you have any experience/fix for this problem, or any ideas (other than ride it at least once a week)?

[Freebird]

Mine is on a Battery Tender anytime it is parked at home. I also use the Odyssey battery and it is about 4 years old now with no problems yet.

[Tartan Terror]

Bike always has a small draw due to the guages so that isnt too far off if the battery doesnt have a full charge. Remember that you also have to charge that battery at better than 6A. 2A trickle isnt enough.

[Freebird]

We've talked about this a few times. I just don't agree with that statement. Like I said, my 1.25 amp battery tender has taken care of my Odyssey for over 4 years. It is true that you can not charge a dead or extremely low Odyssey with the Battery Tender for for keeping it charged/topped off, it works just fine. I've hooked mine up many times when the battery was a little low. Within an hour or two, certainly by morning, it has always been fully charged.

[Freebird]

OK...straight from the Odyssey Battery web site.

 

There is another class of chargers that is designed specifically to maintain the battery in a high state of charge. These chargers, such as the 1.25 amp Battery Tender® from Deltran are not capable of charging a deeply discharged ODYSSEY® battery. This is due to the fact that these chargers have very low output power. They should only be used either to continuously compensate for parasitic losses or to maintain a trickle charge on a fully charged stored battery.

 

Note what I changed to red. That is exactly what we are talking about here. The Battery Tender has worked great for that. At least it has for me.

[V7Goose]

Both of my RSVs will generally sit for a month or two without killing the battery (although that is very rare for me!). My bikes never sit unless I am on vacation without them. The only exception being my 05 after the accident last summer; I had to put a charger on it every 2-3 months to keep it up. If you don't have full gauges, I would not assume your charging system or load on your bike is all correct.

 

Here are a couple of things I have noticed - first, the RSV has very limited excess charging capacity - this is ESPECIALLY true if you do any riding below 55 degrees where the carb heaters are on (just guessing at the trigger temp - too busy to bother to look it up here). If you have changed driving lights to 55 watt bulbs, you definitely have a problem. My point here is that IF you are even near the nominal charging capacity at 3,000 RPM, then your battery is NOT being fully charged in normal riding. It is kept up enough to generally work for day-to-day use, but it will go dead faster when sitting and meet an early death compared to one that is really kept fully charged.

 

Again, only a full set of gauges (or at least an accurate digital volt meter) can answer the questions for you. I do have full gauges on both of my RSVs, and I can tell you for a fact that if the battery is left to sit for a few weeks (or is less than full charge for any other reason), it takes four or more hours of normal steady highway speed riding to fully bring it back up to charge unless you turn off your driving lights and the carb heaters are not on. For comparison, if the battery is truly charged, then the starting load is replaced quickly and the voltage and charge current will generally level out in under 20 minutes. There is more I could say, but that's probably plenty for now!

Goose

[bar836]

I had an issue with my 2003 MRSV, and found it to be a new Clarion CD changer that i had install. When i removed it - no more drain. The thing had an internal short that didn't keep it from working, just killed tha battery in 3 days time.