I can't start up the bike -- HELP!

[alanmcorcoran]

76,

This is going to sound somewhat esoteric, but... a battery tender is not the same as a battery charger. It's a subtle difference and I struggle to articulate it, but the tender people told me that, when I ran my battery down to nothing, that I needed a charger - their tender would not help me at that point. Your situation is different (I think) in that you had a pretty good baseline charge in the battery and I didn't. The tender's are designed to kind of go on and off as needed and many people (and rental companies) leave the batteries on tenders for months at a crack, so there's hardly any danger for over night.

I think chargers do NOT adjust their output/current/on-offedness to the battery - they are "dumber", but they are the proper tool for first time charging up of a new uncharged battery. Overnight is usually all you need, but most of them come with a voltmeter to monitor the charge level.

My charger makes noise when it is on. I'm going to assume the noise you have is coming from the battery. I haven't experienced that on either bike.