Topic: Help... What did I fry?

[Greyhound]

So I have a Ballistic lithium battery which has unfortunately discharged to the point where the Ballistic charger would not charge/condition it.

I know a way to revive these lithium batteries is to hook them up to another working battery for a few minutes to equalize the charge between them enough to where the sleepy battery would get enough boost for the charger to be able to recognize it as a viable battery and begin charging it. I’ve done this before and has worked fine.

I connected the sleepy battery to the one installed on my 77 550K, however in order not to drain my working battery too much (identical Ballistic lithium battery), I hooked up the sleepy one while the bike was running.

After about 1 minute the bike started to very slightly stutter occasionally, I immediately went to disconnect the batteries, but right before I got to the cables, the engine shut off. Both batteries were quite warm.

The electric starter no longer turns the motor over, however the bike can still be started with a kick start.

Is it possible to fry the electric starter this way? Or what else could it be?

[scottly]

Is it possible to fry the electric starter this way? Or what else could it be?

No, you didn't fry the electric starter, but you may have fried both batteries??

[Greyhound]

Right, I was thinking that I indeed may have fried both batteries. I’ll check voltage with multimeter tomorrow.

However, if the battery on the bike was actually fried... Would it start with a kick and run?

[scottly]

No, you need a battery to even kick-start these bikes.

[scottly]

Have you tried putting the second battery on the special charger? It may be salvageable?

[jakec]

I've had a LIon battery get discharged way low like 5v, just left it on the charger forever and it came back to life eventually.

[Greyhound]

I was waiting until the battery cooled off before I connected it to the charger, I’ll go check on it now.

And regarding leaving it on the charger, the lithium chargers have a built-in algorithm to only begin charging if the battery is at 50% charge, otherwise the charger won’t even begin... However, perhaps leaving it on the charger will leak a trickle charge into it after all, until it reaches a point where the charger recognizes enough juice to really start charging it.

[scottly]

I was waiting until the battery cooled off before I connected it to the charger, I’ll go check on it now.

Good idea. Some chargers will not allow charging is the battery is too hot.

[Greyhound]

I think both batteries are fried.

Typically when a battery is connected to the Ballistic charger (which is just a rebranded Optimate TM-229), the “Testing” light will flash for a few secs, and then it will either go into “Charging” or “Conditioning”.

In this case, the Testing light is not even flashing, as if the charger is not recognizing that a batter is connected.

I suppose the same thing happened to the battery on the bike, although it doesn’t have enough juice to run the e-start, maybe it has enough juice to start/run the motor with a boost from the kickstart.

I’ll need to get a multimeter on the batteries tomorrow.

[scottly]

Put the charger on the battery that still had enough juice to power the ignition system to allow the bike to be kick-started.

[Greyhound]

So I finally got a chance to get back to the bike.

The battery was showing only 9.6v, I put the Ballistic charger on it, which cycled through it’s “testing” phase and onto “charging” phase, which lasted for about 45 mins.

The battery now shows 13.4v, however the e-start still won’t turn the engine over. I just hear a click, and the gauge lights get dim while holding the start button. The starter solenoid is whats is making the click noise.

The bike still starts with the kickstarter.

What could it be?

Is it possible it’s the starter solenoid?

[bryanj]

Doubt it, sounds like battery to me, just cos it has volts dont mean it can supply amps