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Post by bobh on Dec 5, 2017 18:56:54 GMT
As I'd not used this bike for a few weeks, a fortmight ago I hooked it up to an Oximiser. It showed all but the top, green, light so I left it on and pretty much forgot about it. I've done this many times in the past, and these chargers are supposed to be designed to be left hooked up.
But when I checked on it on Saturday, instead of a full set of lights showing a full charge, only the red one was on. So I now have a late battery - absolutely dead as a dodo.
The only factor I can think of that might be relevant is that we had a power cut for about 90 minutes towards the end of last week. But I've left chargers hooked up with the mains power off before, and not seen any problems with the battery discharging.
I've used the charger since on a couple of other batteries, though admittedly only for a relatively short time, and it seems to be working fine. So I can only assume that this particular battery was on its last legs and decided to die peacefully at home, rather than letting me down at the side of the road, which I suppose is very considerate of it. But I would expect a 3 1/2 year old Yuasa to give better service than that.
I just hope it hasn't taken any of the bike's electrics with it!
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Post by m40man on Dec 5, 2017 22:06:42 GMT
Left hooked-up, switched on, but no mains current, I can imagine the battery discharging, feeding back into the system [1]. Maybe for the briefest time your battery was solely responsible for powering the entire village . [1] Though it might have electronic trickery to avoid this.
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Post by bobh on Dec 6, 2017 19:24:22 GMT
Without mains power all the battery should be doing is running 3-4 leds, so milliamps.
Unless there's a faulty diode in the charger that allowed the battery to discharge - that might not show up when using it for charging.
Maybe I need to get the multimeter out and do a bit of probing.
Edit - I just remembered, shortly before this I had to re-solder one of the connections at the output plug where the wire had broken off. It's one of the rectangular white plastic ones that was standard for the last decade or so, though I think it may have been superseded now. Obviously there wouldn't have been any heat getting to the charger, but I wonder if earthing one of the connectors might have damaged it? Like I said, time to do some probing.
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Post by Greendivvy Beeb on Dec 17, 2017 12:43:55 GMT
It may just be the battery, depending how old it is the first sign of extreme southern cold weather will kill an old battery if its not used or kept topped up.
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Post by bobh on Dec 30, 2017 19:58:58 GMT
Update - I can't find anything faulty with the charger. So I can only assume one of the cells in the battery gave up while it was on the charger - very strange, particularly as these chargers are supposed to restore dud batteries, not the other way round.
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Post by hughmcq on Dec 30, 2017 22:46:42 GMT
Depends - some of the CTEK chargers have a mode which will kill batteries apparently
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Post by bobh on Dec 31, 2017 16:40:07 GMT
Interesting.
The Oximiser doesn't have any modes, as it's just intended for motorcycle batteries. It just has a bank of 4 LEDs, from red at the bottom to green at the top. Normally when I connect the charger I get red+amber+yellow (sometimes only red+amber if the battery's been allowed to get a bit low), then the green chimes in after a while to show it's fully charged. I can't remember offhand whether the green had already come up on this particular battery when I left it to its own devices, but when I did get around to checking it only the red light was on, and when checked with a multimeter the disconnected voltage was around 10v, i.e. a cell short of a full compliment.
The lesson seems to be just use the charger for top up and not leave it on permanently.
Just a thought - I'm using my laptop with the charger on - could that damage the battery?
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Post by bobh on Dec 31, 2017 16:49:24 GMT
..... the first sign of extreme southern cold weather You may scoff, but when I came to wash the bike today after yesterday's Jan Jolly recce, I found the recent hard frosts had broken the adaptor on my outdoor tap, and cracked the body of the hose gun (both plastic and easily replaceable, fortunately). The western Thames Valley is very much a frost pocket - just check the weather reports from Brize Norton or Benson sometime. But hopefully it will be back to its balmy self in a week's time for the run!
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Post by teejayexc on Dec 31, 2017 17:13:54 GMT
Ventured out to my D9 today, it's been on an optimiser since last weekend, it was showing just the red light then, (poor ol' thing hasn't been started since last spring ). Third time of pressing the starter button she burst into life. Perhaps I'll get my ar5e back in the saddle some time soon, but unfortunately not for the Jan jolly
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