Topic: Battery question: Time to replace?

[KB02]

Okay, So my battery is giving me mixed signals here and I thought I would see what you all think about it.

With the bike just sitting there, the battery is reading about 12.5 volts. Aas soon as you turn the key, it drops a volt. As soon as you hit the starter button, it drops to about 3 - 4 volts and the starting will not engage. You just hear the infamous clicking of a dead battery. (This is all with the headlight turned off, by the way)

The Bike starts fine using the kickstarter. At idle the battery terminals are reading about 13.x volts and with the engine at a good RMP it reads about 14.6. I took it for a nice long ride the other day hopiong that I had just run it down working on little things and starting for only short amounts of time and that the ride would be enough to recharge it. But when I got back from my ride it still had the same issue.

Now here are the two nit-picky things that might help. When getting the bike ready for the summer, I forgot it on the charger and I guess my trickle charger didn't trickle very well because all the electrolite evaporated. Due to a lack of distilled water, I filled it with tap water. It worked fine after thatuntill now.
Also, it is one of those elcheapo Everstart batteries from Walmart.

I put it on the charger for abot 12 hours yesterday and am going to install it when I get home from work and see if it's better. But if not, what do you think? replace it? Or could I get away with replacing the water with either distilled water or straight up electrolight?

[ofreen]

The battery is history.  Once the grieving process is over and you can do so without feeling guilt, buy another one.

[keiths]

The battery provably isn't worth playing with because the concentrated sulfuric acid, from letting the level drop, tends to make the lead plates look like swiss cheese. Adding the tap water only made things worse. The impurities in the tap water coats whats left of the plates. For a few dollars you can try flushing out the battery with distilled water and add new electrolite, but it may not help.

[mkramer1121]

Your batteries cooked.  When the bikes running, and you check voltage at the battery you are getting the alternator voltage.  A fully charged battery will read about 12.8 volts.  Even though it came back after you cooked it, you just weakened the battery a ton.  Same goes for running it dead.  One thing to look at, though it sounds like you cooked it. Take a look at it, see if you can see a number of white deposits on the plates.  If you do, thats sulfur that has bonded to the plate.  This typically happens from self discharge (not charging the battery).  When a battery sits without being charged (usually over winter), it actually self discharges, and sulfur deposits build up on the plates.  Just something for future reference.

[mkramer1121]

OH, this may be obvious, but also, with your kickstarter, you're providing power to turn the engine, the battery just needs to provide a spark to the plugs.  When you use electric start, your battery is under a more severe load, and providing all the power to get it started.