I agree, keep the battery on a tender to keep it charged and try to keep the RPMs above 2500 while riding. Anything lower and the electrical system drains the battery.
-Kyle On Mon, Sep 11, 2017 at 9:21 PM, Matt Awesome <[email protected]> wrote: > Ahh, pretty sure I know what's going on. > > Your bike is behaving normally. The problem is your battery discharging. > > The manual flat out states that idling is not high enough rpm to be > net-positive charge to the battery. This perfectly matches your > description that after 10 minutes of being stopped or going really > slow, it dies. It dies because the battery is dead. > > The battery was possibly not full to begin with (10 minutes is pretty > quick to drain a full battery, but, motocycle batteries are small). > > If you make sure the battery is topped up, this should never happen. > Deep discharging a starter battery is crippling to it. Leaving it > deeply discharged is murder. Some starters can handle it 30 times, > some might die ('die' being, some tiny fraction of its energy stored) > after 5 deep discharges. Any lead acid left empty will begin to > sulfate, and may never be recoverable after a few weeks or months > sulfated. > > So it may be that your battery needs to be replaced, but the problem > isn't the battery, the problem is discharging the battery which may > also be eventually killing it. > > To fix this... > > - Recharge your battery fully. It might just be stuck at 10% capacity > now (meaning it charges to full voltage, but doesn't hold a lot of > energy anymore). It may also have internal shorts from too much of the > plates sloughing off and laying at the bottom (meaning, it > self-discharges quickly even after it was charged fully). If it is, > too late, replace the battery. Focus on not letting the next one die. > - Keep your battery topped up via charger when parked for long > periods (lead acids will be significantly drained after only a month > or two). > - Don't let it sit and idle or run at super slow speed for a long > time. Put it on a charger. > - Buy a shitty $20 automotive solar panel from your favorite discount > crap store and throw that on the bike when parked. No fancy brains > needed, solar is weak enough it won't overcharge it. Little ones are > usually fabric backed and can be rolled up. > > If you're feeling fancy: > - Replace lead acid with Lithium Iron (tool packs). Their > self-discharge rate is 100x lower. > > My two cents. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Nighthawk Motorcycle Lovers!" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/nighthawk_lovers. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Nighthawk Motorcycle Lovers!" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/nighthawk_lovers. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
