My bike's playing up

Hey guys

Not been on here in ages.......life's been getting in the way. Anyhoo, will catch up with all the posts as soon as I can, but right now, I'm in a bit of a pickle.


Took the bike to work on Tuesday morning, and 13 hours later get to the bike, hoping to get home sharpish.....battery is flat. I'd actually supspected it would be, as some kind soul in the hospital had tried to warn me earlier on in the morning that I'd left my side lights on. Message was posted on the hospital intranet, but I only saw it an hour before I was due to clock off!!!!

I can understand that after 13 hours with the sidelights on, the battery would get flat, but what I don't understand is how I could have left the side lights on in the first place?? Surely once you turn the engine off and take the key out, the lights should go off??? I'm sure that I'd also turned the light switch off ?? I guess I'm being an idiot here, but are the side lights the little ones on either side of the headlamp??

ANYWAY, so with a flat battery, and no idea what to do next, I had to ring recovery. I had to pay £53 just to get the guy to come out to me, reason being that I'd used up all my call outs for the year! WTF!!!!!
Apparently I'm only allowed 4 callouts and I'd used them up. I HAVE called them out 4 times, but I didn't realise you get a limit on how many callouts you can get!! So when I get a chance I shall get out my policy document and read through it thoroughly.

So the recovery man came out. Same guy thats come out the 4 previous time, and twice before that . So he knows me and how rubbish I am at the bike. So he got the jump leads out and bike starts up fine. But once leads are off...nothing. So he says, battery is so discharged it needs hours and hours of charging and my options were

1) Take me and bike home (it was 20.30pm) by this time, so no point going to a garage. That would cost me an additional £100, cos I'd used up all my call outs blah blah blah

2) Leave the bike at work and sort it out at my leisure.....yeah right.......don't even know how to get the battery out!

3) The kind recovery man offered to take bike to his house and charge it up then drop it off at my house first thing following morning.....at no extra cost.


So I went with option three.

Following morning, true to his word, recovery man drops off bike. However, he'd only managed to charge it up for 4hrs only as he'd received a couple more call outs and didn't get home till wee hours of the morning.

So he showed me how to get battery out stick it on charge and whip it back in.So I kept it on charge all day and night Wednesday and rode to work Thursday afternoon, feeling very pleased with myself that I'd managed to sort it out.

No problem getting back home Thursaday evening.

No problem getting to work yesterday evening for a night shift, till this morning....won't start!!!

Makes a clicking sound kinda like to the right hand side of the bike......then
nothing. The alarm is also misbehaving and keeps going off when it shouldn't really!!!!

SO......do you reckon the battery's flat again, or something more sinister???
The 5 times the recovery man has been out to my bike he has told me the battery is too big for the bike and the seat doesn't clip back on as it should because the battery is a little too tall. I called the dealer up about this as it was still under warranty (few months ago now) and they said battery was fine and the recovery man does'nt know what he is talking about!!!

Anyway, I looked it up on Wednesday, and yes, the battery is not the correct one for the SV. Its a little too tall although the voltage and that seem the same. Couldn't tell you what battery it is at the moment, cos I've had to leave it at work.

So I reckon, maybe I didn't put the battery back in correctly. Since it rained overnight and bike was exposed, (and the seat slightly raised), could that have affected the battery?? Or is the battery just plain knackered. No idea how long it had been in the bike before I got it.

So I've left it at work. No way am I ringing recovery again. They'll only charge me another £53 and more to take it away. So I'll buy a new battery today, take it to work, fit it on bike and if that works.......woohooo. If not.....I'll just bash my head against a brick wall.

Melody

If you turn the key to the steering lock, it is easy to turn it one click more, this puts the side lights on. Always worth checking.

As for the battery, it certainly sounds like its flat, the alarm playing up would also signam this. The alarm will also drain the battery over time.

It sounds like the battery is either not holding its charge or that it is not being charged by the bike when its in use. Try charging the battery fully and seeing how it behaves and ask someone with a meter to check that it is being charged when the eingine is running, the voltage should be over about 13 volts. With the information you describe it sounds more like the battery has decided to fail following its total discharge when the bike was left with the lights on. A new battery should be able to recover from this.

Hope this helps.

Thanks Beenz

I shall get one on my way to work and hopefully job done.

Melody

Might be worth investing in a optimizer.
Had the same problem with a new battery,let it go completely flat.
Wasn,t convinced it had knackerd the battery,so bought a optimate for less than the price of the battery,and it's been fine ever since.
You have a connector fitted to the bike,so you don't have to keep removing the seat to get at the battery.Then when you park up,takes 2 seconds to connect up.

Mike

If the manufacturers would put LED sidelights on bikes instead of filament bulbs (archaic) this problem wouldn't arise Melody. With LED's you could leave your sidelights on for around, theoretically, 3 years without flattening the battery. Of course the battery would leak its current away well before that but if they fitted lithium ion batteries we wouldn't get the short term flattening that we do. If I charge my camcorder battery it takes around 4 months to go flat and if you don't think lithium ion cells are up to the job, those are the cells that are often used to power high speed electric prototype bikes because they have a high output for their size! Probably last for about 5 years too, don't leak, very light weight, less burn damage in a crash!

[yorkie_chris]

Fitting the optimate connector is easy, if you've already taken the battery out before then it will be no trouble for you, but if you want the charging circuits checking then you know where I am

Chris

Originally Posted by RhythmJunkie

If the manufacturers would put LED sidelights on bikes instead of filament bulbs (archaic) this problem wouldn't arise Melody. With LED's you could leave your sidelights on for around, theoretically, 3 years without flattening the battery. Of course the battery would leak its current away well before that but if they fitted lithium ion batteries we wouldn't get the short term flattening that we do. If I charge my camcorder battery it takes around 4 months to go flat and if you don't think lithium ion cells are up to the job, those are the cells that are often used to power high speed electric prototype bikes because they have a high output for their size! Probably last for about 5 years too, don't leak, very light weight, less burn damage in a crash!

Yes, yes, that's all very well. But the manufacturers DON'T do any of that, do they, so it's not really any help, is it?

True! I'll get me coat!

[northwind]

To be fair, I think Rhythmjunkie's post might have been meant more to make Melody feel better about the lights A lot of us have done it, I've removed the front one and I've got LEDs in the rear so I've discovered I can leave them on overnight and it'll still start in the morning (did that on purpose btw, just to see if it worked.

But yeah, unfortunately sometimes a deeply discharged battery just won't recharge properly, I've got a "spare" which only holds just enough charge to start the bike, oh, 4 times out of 5 Guess how it got that way...

Jumpleads can be your friend- wouldn't have helped here but they can save so much hassle. Halfords do a set that you can fit easily in a bike, they're not great (OK, let's expand on that, they smoke a little in use, but they last long enough to start a bike) but it's better than being totally dependant on others, it's not usually hard to convince people to give you a jump.

[yorkie_chris]

Originally Posted by northwind

it's not usually hard to convince people to give you a jump.

Fnarr fnarr


(....Coat)