Recommend me a battery optimiser.

Looks like I have two bikes that are going to need to be kept on optimisers this winter. Both seem to have slightly weak batteries, but not weak enough to cause major problems and I don't think they are at a stage where they need replaced. They are fine if you ride both bikes at least once a week, but I don't. I do tend to ride at least once a week, but it's one bike or the other, and my sports bike will be SORN for winter.

So, I need a second battery optimiser. I have an Oxford Oximiser which cost me about 40 quid 5 or 6 years ago. You get them for 25 quid now, but I've not been particularly impressed with mine. It refused to recover a dead battery on the XT, but when I whacked an ancient and basic car charger on the battery overnight it came back to life and I've been using it in the bike ever since.

The Oximiser does work fine for battery maintenance on a healthy battery.

I don't particularly want to go and spend 45 quid on an Optimate either, I'm not regularly trying to recover completely dead batteries.

Do you own something different? Is it any good? How much are they? Thanks

Would buying an additional battery connector not work Ralph? wire one up to each battery then you can just charge which ever you like the night before your intending on riding it?

Not sure if you can hook 2 up at the same time but neither can I see a reason why this wouldnt work...

Originally Posted by Owenski

the night before your intending on riding it?

That would require a few bits of brain function, such as advance planning and memory. Mine does neither.

Originally Posted by Owenski

Not sure if you can hook 2 up at the same time but neither can I see a reason why this wouldnt work...

Don't THINK this would work, but interested on peoples views on it if they disagree with me though?

The Oximiser works by monitoring battery voltage, when it drops a bit, it kicks in to recharge. If you were to have two batteries wired together in parallel, it would treat both batteries as one, and so long as one was healthy and providing the right voltage read, the other could be dead and the charger wouldn't kick in ????? Or would one battery drag the the other's voltage down and result in the charger kicking in for both of them ?????

If you put both batteries in series, wouldn't they read 24v ?????

I should warn you I know very little about electronics...

you can get an acumen charger that has 2 outputs!

Originally Posted by AndyBrad

you can get an acumen charger that has 2 outputs!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Acumen-Pla...-/150580868028

Originally Posted by -Ralph-

I don't particularly want to go and spend 45 quid

Ahem!

[Biker Biggles]

Had my optimate twelve years now.
The odd extra tenner for it pales into insignificance

Col, I bought a basic Oxford oximiser 600 for £25 and charged my completely flat DRZ battery and it's been fine since.

Yeah, maybe another Oximiser, they are on evilbay for 23 quid including delivery. The problem with them is if a battery shows below 4.1 volts, they refuse to start charging, but I suppose so long as I have an old fashioned 'dumb' charger to use that doesn't matter. This is only for continual battery maintenance after all, discharge & recharge, just like riding the bike every day. The expensive microprocessor tech stuff is only needed to recover something that's been left to die.

I just know some people have bought chargers from Lidl or Aldi and been very happy with them, I was looking for some other budget Make/Model suggestions.

Can't you just get another connector and do one at a time?