It has been a simply gorgeous week here on the Texas Gulf Coast and I have been riding to work every day. It was just so fine yesterday that I just kept missing turns and ended up taking the long way home...ya'll know the one...the 50+ mile winding route through the back roads. When I pulled up into the driveway about ninety minutes later, I discovered that the garage door was locked so I shut it down and went inside to open the door and got sidetracked talking to my sweetie about this and that for about 45 minutes...and didn't remember that since I originally was just going in to open the garage door, I had not thought to shut off the switch.

It was such a nice afternoon and the killer traffic had died down some so I decided to ride some more...and discovered that the battery was kaput. Well, the battery is a HD battery that was put on by the dealer about 19 months ago so I was worried that I may have killed it dead. I pulled off the seat and hooked up my el cheapo Wal-Mart battery charger and was even more worried when I saw how much current it was pulling...

When I went back to check it out about 15 minutes later, the charging current had dropped considerably indicating that the battery was still good, the bike cranked right up and so I put the seat back on and away I go...I rode for about an hour and when I got home, I put it on trickle charge via the aux cigarette lighter and the current meter barely moved...

This is the second time that this battery has been completely drained. I have decades of experience with batteries and charging systems and electrical stuff like that and I honestly do not believe that a cheap battery would have been able to recover from this mistake.

When it is time to get a new battery, I will definitely pony up the extra bucks to replace it with another higher quality battery even if it has to be branded Harley Davidson...do it once, do it right.

 

Been there, done that...

 

Glad it charged back up for you. My two and a half year old battery died this past winter so I thought I would replace it with one I found on the internet. Ninety nine dollars and forty five cents that modern marvel cost me and lasted about two months. So I went to HD and bought a new one and had it explained to me the HD batteries are made with interior walls to dampen the vibrations so as to last a longer time. Anyway we shall see.

 

Have 2 XL's and a Street Bob, all had their original 6 & 7 year old HD batteries replaced with new HD batteries.

The HD batteries really are not that much more expensive than the cheapos.

Just my experience, but I think they're worth it.

 

I sometimes wonder why Harley doesn't put orange and black gasoline pumps at the dealership and sell very expensive gasoline with Harley Davidson exclusive approved specialty additives for air cooled engines

 

My battery is original HD (over 4 yrs old now) and I accidentally drained it by leaving the ignition switch on once while on a ride out at the coast. $100.00 later for the tow truck to come rescue me and jump my bike (we were a few miles from services), it rebounded just fine and "so far so good". Funny part of the story is some surfers (and their chicks) let us hang with them and their VW van and even provided us a couple of beverages. All in all, it turned out OK!

 

I just killed my battery last week.

I was taking her to the indy for some work and wanted to get the winter dust off so I gave her a bath the day before. Next morning my friend and i go to start it up and he see's the light on my speedo is on. he says "I don't think this is supposed to be like this". apparently when i turned the key switch off I didn't turn it fully off. A quick jump is all it needed. All is good. Lesson learned.

 

Maybe a slightly less expensive alternative to the H-D batteries. They're still AGM batteries and look pretty solid. Don't know myself - hope not to have to change mine out for a while but ran across them during some random research.

http://www.vartapowersports.com/en-us

 

THIS.

 

There are a few things that HD sells that are definitely the best out there hands down...the HD (made by Deka) battery is one of them. Oil filter is another.

This is just another reason I use the ignition switch to shut down the bike and not the kill switch. I never touch the kill switch.