Bike will not start up! =(

[blaine]

Originally Posted by alanmcorcoran

Yes, they will. As long as the battery is still chargeable. I have run both my Strat and my GZ battery down to 0 (no click, no light, no nothing) and brought them both back to life with a simple Manny, Moe and Jack (pep boys) charger. They have been running fine for over a year since. (I'm not a battery expert either. Mrlmd and Easy know more than I do and I think they'll agree with me.)

Battery tender people told me if the charge was DOWN more than 3 volts the tender wouldn't work. Maybe I misunderstood, but the lady basically told me not to buy their product, and to buy a charger. I bought a tender (in addition to the charger) anyway, but I haven't even opened it up yet. That was over a year ago. The charger I've used three times successfully.

:plus1: IMO You are better off getting a 2 amp trickle charger with auto shut off.
:rawk: :2tup:

[Easy Rider]

Originally Posted by alanmcorcoran

Battery tender people told me if the charge was DOWN more than 3 volts the tender wouldn't work. Maybe I misunderstood,

Yes, I think you did.
AND I don't think that you ever had a battery with 0 volts; not one that recovered anyway.

A wet cell battery that is completely discharged, after sitting for a while, usually shows at least 6-8 volts just from "surface charge", much like static electricity.

A "normal" charger is a pretty simple, brute force device. It will contiune to work, for a while, if you just short the clips together. A tender is more delicate and has built-in protections against things like that. Thus it won't try to charge anything with less than a 3 V static charge because that likely indicates the operator has screwed up or the battery is beyond hope.

So......one more time: For most "normal" situations where the battery is not stone cold dead but just too weak to get the job done.......a "tender" will work fine for getting the charge back up; it just might take a L O N G time to do it.

Flattly stating "A tender is not a charger." is giving out incorrect information.

I do agree, however, that a person with a 12 month riding season probably has no real need for a "tender" and a regular charger would serve you better.

And a P.S.............This may NOT apply if we were instead talking about a BIG battery, like in a big car or truck. A big enough battery, thorougly drained, connected to a small enough charger may never get the job done.