From the subject I am sure you can tell I am not a very handy guy, in fact I am a man who pay man to do a man job, so these questions might seems silly to you but please help.
Winter is coming if it is not here already and i don’t use my R1 a lot in the winter but every now and then I like to take to out for a ride in case it feels lonely in the garage on its own, so i need to get a battery bosster/just start charger in case the battery goes flat but I am not sure which one. I know it is a 12v battery but some charger says 12V 4amp and the other says 12V 8amp, so which I should I get? doesn’t really matter it is a 4amp or 8amp?
The Halfords Bike it Motorcycle Maintenance Charger 1.25 Amp is good (link below).
I specifically selected the 1.25 amp charger over the 2 to 4 amp charger because I heard that if you want to simply maintain a motorcycle battery by trickle charging it - a charger with a low charge rate like this one (only 1.25 amps) is better for a relatively small motorcycle battery than a unit with a higher charging rate.
I also have an Optimate which has various diagnostic and de-sulphating/recovery features - but for basic trickle charging I prefer to use the Halfords charger as it is simple to use and does the job.
Thanks for the replies guys. ok, i think i need to give you a little bit more details to help you to help me.
The bike will be parked in a garage with no power source, so the idea is I need a device (whatever it call which I am no so sure) that I can charge it at home then take and connect it to the bike battery to help it to start or jump start as you might call it when the battery is flat. Am I making any sense to you guys?
This is was I was looking.
I hope you guy understand what I mean as I said I am no good good a man job LOL
One option is to remove the battery from the bike and take it home with you where you can attach it to your trickle charger.
If you are not going to be using the bike much over the winter then this is no big deal - most bike batteries are small and easily transportable unlike a car battery.
Just take the seat off, locate the battery and unscrew the terminals (remove the negative terminal first - then the positive - re-installation of the battery is the reverse - attach positive lead first then negative).
If I do that on my Aprilia I have to reset the immobilizer, delve into the arcane software of the instrument panel and reset everything from the time to speed calibration.
Bite the bullet. Buy an Optimax and leave it permanently attached when the bike is standing idle for anything more than a couple of weeks.
I was looking into this a week or so ago - did come up against a potential problem and worth talking with a technical person at the supplier/manufacturer.
Apparently some inverters are not suitable for this application I didn’t get to the bottom of it before deciding I wasn’t going to take a garage.
If you going to use a car battery don’t leave it on the concrete floor, putting some wood strips under it will be fine.
oh, what Watt inverter do I need? there’s so many of them. i know it is 12v DC to 230v AC but Watt starts from 100 to 1200. I am thinking anything between 150W and 300W should be enough for the optimax, right. although some of the 1000w is cheaper but the question is what do I need and the lower watt will last longer and run cooler, right. I am just concern about the safety.
Maybe it’s best you contact Oxford products and tell them what you are planning on doing and see if they have an issues using the inverter or advising which rating to go for.
I’ve looked up the thing I said about the battery on concrete - seems I’m showing my age. Newer batteries don’t suffer the discharge problem, so you don’t have to keep it on the bedside table.
Isn’t the car battery + Inverter + Optimate solution a bit
over the top?
If your bike battery is 12v and the car battery is 12v then
surely you can just connect the two ( + to + and - to - )
and the voltage will settle to be the same on both which
means the car battery will stop the bike battery voltage dropping.
Actually in this case you will be charging the bike battery from the car battery
Yes eventually they will both just go flat, that’s obvious, e.g. if you left them for years
That’s clear
The whole point of using a car battery is that it has much
greater capacity than the bike battery so it will not
discarge as quickly as the bike battery due to the current
taken by the alarm, clock, etc on the bike. So if you simply
link the batteries, assuming they are the same voltage, it
should just work, for a few months at least.
