How Do I Jump My Battery
 

Hi,

My bike has 900 miles; has been in storage (inside) for 6 months but battery is dead although light still comes on.

Question is should I try to jump the battery or should I buy a new one?

Please let me know, I want to get to riding.

Thanks.

Suzukigurletoo

Re: How Do I Jump My Battery
 

Neither. You should buy a battery CHARGER. Get one that has a 2 amp (or less) range and leave it connected for 8-10 hours......and then pray that it holds up long term.

It may not but you should have a charger anyway. New battery from dealer or Interstate: About $90.

Re: How Do I Jump My Battery
 

The light still comes on because there's still some amount of "juice" left in the battery, but not enough to turn over the starter or start the bike.
Charge it up fully overnight, with a plug in charger (2 amps- not 8 or 12 or more) first, or leave it overnight on a trickle charger, before buying a new one, you may be able to recover it. If you jump it and get the bike started, the charging system of the bike is not strong enough to bring the battery back to it's fully charged capacity if it's dead. It would take a few tankfuls of gas to do that, it's got a weak, low amp output charging system. If you jump it with another battery, like from a car, just connect the battery cables to the good battery, don't have the car engine running, so you don't burn something out.
If the bike has been sitting for 6 months, there may be no fuel in the carb, so you should turn the petcock to PRIME for a minute or two, then set it back to RUN, then try and start it.

Re: How Do I Jump My Battery
 

You could also put it in 3rd gear and try to push start it (don't forget to switch the ignition key to 'on' and use the choke), then drive for at least half an hour (longer, like one whole hour, is better) and your battery will have some charge again. I did that last winter when the bike just said "click...".

Re: How Do I Jump My Battery
 

Ok guys thanks for the tips BUT the real problem for me is that I DON'T KNOW HOW TO CHARGE THE BATTERY. I did take the cover off the side panel and located the battery but I don't know how to put the leads on it or where to put them, of course I know red is positive and the other (black?) I think is negative and the leads have to correlate. Other than that I'm lost.

What do you think?

Re: How Do I Jump My Battery
 

As suggested, get a battery charger. The smallest is best. A "Battery Tender" is a motorcycle specific charger and many folks swear by them. The Tender will come with proper leads and are color coded with excellant instructions for the uninitiated. You can get one on-line or check out your local bike shops. The package also includes a cord to be permanentely attached to the battery so you don't have to remove the side cover. Just leave the other end(2 or 3 inches)hang out from underneath the side cover. Both of our bikes have this feature. It is great if the battery is run down or the bike sits idle for a long time. The Tender will maintain the battery at full charge and is fully automatic.

Re: How Do I Jump My Battery
 

I've got mine going to the tool tray under the saddle. That way, I know that the socket is going to stay nice and dry (and hopefully corrosion free) I know I have to lift the saddle up to plug in the charger, but it doesn't take a moment, & I'm not going to be riding with the charger attached, anyway. :roll:

Re: How Do I Jump My Battery
 

The battery tender should come with a lead with a socket on one end (to plug the charger in) & two rings on the other end.(one on each cable, marked + & - or pos & neg.) The battery has two terminals with bolts. Undo the red (+) bolt, & add the red/+ lead to the bolt, & fasten it up (nice & snug, but not enough force to shear the bolt.) Repeat this on the other black (-) terminal, with the other lead. Hey presto - job done.

By the way - if it's the original battery, it'll have metric bolts, like ALL the bolts on the bike. :)

Re: How Do I Jump My Battery
 

I think that is about all you need to know......other than what kind of charger to get.
A "dual range" one is most versitile. Something like 2/6 or 2/8 etc. The 2 setting is for motorcycles and lawn mowers and the higher setting is for cars and trucks.

Select the 2 range and 12V. Plug in the charger (do not touch the clip leads together!!).
Connect black clip to negative battery; connect red clip to positive (+) battery.....making sure that it does NOT also touch the frame.

Note that the meter on the charger goes up about half way or more.
Leave connected at least a couple of hours or until the meter goes down to about 1/8 scale. It won't hurt to leave it connected for 8-10 hours just to be sure.

Disconnect the charger before you try to start the bike.

It is a little easier to see what you are doing with the seat AND side cover removed.

AND finally, the owner's manual AND service manual AND parts list are available here for downloading. They are also available through the dealer for a "nominal" cost !!

P.S. OR find a friend who knows about all this stuff and ask for help. :biggrin:
I would volunteer but we're not quite close enough to make it an easy ride.

Re: How Do I Jump My Battery
 

Plug in the charger (do not touch the clip leads together!!

I like to put the leads on and then plug the charger in, then I do not have to worry about touching the live leads.
:)

Re: How Do I Jump My Battery
 

If you have a sketchy battery, it is definitely worth investing 30 minutes or so into learning how to "push" start the bike. There are detailed instructions on here elsewhere, so I won't repeat them. The thing is, it's kind of tricky to know just how bad your battery is, and if it poops out when you aren't home, it's not so easy to hook up the charger, tender or jumper cables. A slight downhill is pretty much all you need. The pro's recommend using third gear to start it, but I was able to start mine in any of the first three after some practice. When mine was acting up and stalling, I used to routinely restart it without pressing the starter button to conserve the battery power.

I have also re-started the Strat this way, but it requires a steeper hill.

Re: How Do I Jump My Battery
 

I have 3 chargers, I bought 1 and people keep giving them to me. One came with my GZ and its pretty nice, it will fully charge your battery in half an hour or so. it is called a "Husky Smart Battery Charger" and comes with instructions. Pretty cool and electronic as opposed to the old style with the needle that you can never tell if its 100 percent or 0 percent and you have to let go overnight.

If I were you I would push start it and drive it around with the headlight beams on low for an hour or so, that should charge it for the price of however much gas you burn in an hour or buy one of my old chargers.

Re: How Do I Jump My Battery
 

You would think it would but experience tells me that it WON'T.....unless you take it out on the highway for an hour maybe. The electrical system just doesn't have the capacity to completely recharge a dead battery, at least not from just puttering around town.

Once your battery gets near to fully discharged it NEEDS to be fully recharged.....and the sooner the better.

AND despite what the charger maker might tell you, it is NOT a good ideal to completely recharge a dead battery in only a half an hour. You can't change the laws of physics and chemistry and charging that fast is HARD on the plates and can release enough gas to cause an explosion.

Re: How Do I Jump My Battery
 

One more tidbit on this - the battery tender people do not recommend you use a tender as a charger. I was kind of surprised about this as I assumed that, after a while a tender would "bring up" a battery to full charge, but they told me that once the battery is down a certain percentage (I forget the actual measurement) the tender won't work.

Based on their advice, I bought a charger to recharge my Strat battery after I left the headlight on for three days. That was months ago. So far so good. I used the low (2 amp?) setting and let it charge overnight.

Re: How Do I Jump My Battery
 

Is it correct to say that simply applying a voltmeter to the battery will tell if the battery is good or not? What range am I looking for? 12 +/- 1/2V or so?

Re: How Do I Jump My Battery
 

12.8v is a fully charged battery. 12.0 is low, no good. 10v is 80+% discharged.
The only way to tell if a battery is good is to put it on a load tester - if you don't have one, after you charge it up overnight, take it to a battery store and have them test it.
If you get a new sealed 12v battery, make sure you charge it up fully before you put it into service, otherwise it'll die real quick.

Re: How Do I Jump My Battery
 

The basic answer is NO, you can't tell just by measuring the "no load" voltage.......unless it is in REALLY bad shape, as the 10V mentioned above.

It is 12.6, Doc. 2.1V X 6 cells. :)
But meter errors can give readings from 12.2 to 13 V. or so.....and immediately after charging, they can read slightly above 13 for a few minutes.

The headlight and starter are good load tests.
The voltage at the battery should drop no more than a couple of tenths with the lights on (but NOT running) and it should not drop much below 11V with the starter running.

Probably the best test of a battery is whether or not it still DOES what it is supposed to DO.