Easy Way To Confirm A Defective Battery?
I was going to ride my CB750 yesterday, but it wouldn’t start. This is just like what happened a few weeks ago. The battery was dead.
The problem is, this is a new battery. I just bought it back in October. It worked fine then, it worked fine in November, it worked fine in December, it worked fine in January, it worked fine in February . . . and then in March it was dead. I put it on a trickle charge but after two days when that didn’t do any good I took it to a shop and they put it on a charge. A few hours later I took it home, put it in, and the bike fired right up. And now it’s dead again.
OK, I’m good at troubleshooting so here’s what I’m looking at. If anyone has any thoughts they’d like to offer please do.
It could be that the battery is defective. One sure way to confirm or refute that would be to buy another one and see if the problem arises again. That would confirm that it is not the battery. The problem with that is the expense, and if it turns out the battery is not the problem then I’ve got two batteries and still have a problem.
It could be a short. This is what I would expect if a second battery did the same thing, and if it is then that’s going to be a pain to track down. But I don’t think it’s a short. If it was a short I suspect the entire battery would be dead, but as it is, there’s enough juice to turn the light on and if it were a short I would expect it to have no power at all.
It could be that there’s a problem with my charger. The last time I let it charge for two days and still got no response at all when I pushed the starter button. A two-hour charge at the shop got me going. This wouldn’t explain why it went dead again but it would explain why two days of charging did nothing. Do I have two problems? There is definitely electricity coming out of the outlet I plug into–I checked that. How do you check a charger to see if it’s working?
It could be the starter. I wondered about that the first time but once I got the battery charged it fired up with no problem, so I don’t think that’s it.
It could be the fusible link, too, but I checked that and it’s fine. Plus, as with the starter, that was a non-issue last time.
This is all complicated by the fact that the shop I bought the battery from has since closed its doors. I can’t just take the battery in and ask them to test it and give me a new one if it’s defective. This is really a pain. Yesterday was a gorgeous day and I wanted to ride. Bah.
Biker Quote for Today
A good mechanic will let you watch without charging you for it.
Tags: battery problem, motorcycle
August 22nd, 2010 at 12:53 am
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