Will Do... thanks Ed.

 

Trickle chargers are commonly called 'maintainers'. Good reason. They are not meant to 're-charge' but rather to 'maintain' the level of charge in your battery. Most 'maintainers' only charge at a rate of like 1.5A's which is a trickle of voltage.

You can re-charge a 12V motorcycle battery sometimes if totally discharged. Quite often tho if the battery is too old or has been discharged too many times, you may have to replace the battery.

I would remove the battery and sit it on a piece of wood or something non conductive (not on a cement floor) and hook up a car charger at a rate of somewhere near 5+ amps. If it is at 10 amps, like someone said, keep checking that the battery is not overheating. Only charge it like this for about an hour. Then use a hydrometer to measure the specific gravity level in each battery cell (where the water goes) or use a load tester to check the batteries load carrying capability. Either test is self explanatory in procedure. Either test's results will tell you if the battery is good or bad.

 

The battery "tenders" are only meant to maintain a battery and not to recharge it from dead.Quite often the inline fuse on a tender will blow when trying to recharge a dead battery.
You can use a small trickle charger of less than 10 amps that has a tapering charge to restore some life to the battery but it must be monitored so it does not overheat the battery or the battery will be toast.Generally when doing this, only get the battery charge high enough to assure that the tender will take over again.
Discharging the battery completely like happened here removes usable life (shortens life) from it even if you do manage to restore a usable charge to the battery by different means.

Heat from overcharging or fast charging generally warps the plates and renders the battery shorted as a result, then a new battery is in order.

Try never to jump a low battery from a larger car battery. Damage to the electronics can result from doing this.

 

i would look at 2 things here..
1. how old is the battery?
2. what's it worth for it not to leave you on the road somewhere?

if you even hesitate to answer either of these questions, just spend the $75 - $90 on a new battery and put your mind at ease not to mention you'll be able to use that time to polish up some chrome or buff out a couple of swirl marks.. :-)

 

I stuck a trickle charger on my dead battery. It would go form charging to 'fault / check battery'. This is because the charge in the battery was to low. So I would reset the charger. Finally it kept charging to full.

 

yeah well, if your battery did that to you for trickle-charging, then I'm not too sure I'd be trusting it to make sure I get back home on a cold rainy night with my smokin hot wife on the back. batteries are cheap in comparison to aggravation and headaches

 

LOL, thats what we've been saying.

 

At least a couple of ways of looking at it:

1) Reliability

2) If a (ie.) $100 battery has an expected life of (ie.) 5 years, thats $20 / year. How much effing around you wanna do after say 4 years to resurrect 20 bux worth of marginalized battery ? Not much I should think, certainly investing 20 more bux in it with the Dealer would make no sense at all.

If I flattened a good battery that was less than a couple of years old I'd consider taking it to a dealer or resurrecting it myself. If it were over 2-4 years old, I'd try resurrecting it myself and, depending on how that went, hoping for continued reliability. If I flattened a 4+ year old battery, unless it charged right up and held first try, I'd treat my starter and my peace of mind to a nice new unit.

New batteries can be duds too. New or resurrected, I wouldn't stake serious stranding against reliability until I'd seen maybe a week of reliable service.

Hows that for over thinking it guys ?

 

If you use a battery charger that puts out greater than 2 amps you take the chance of damaging or shorting the life of your battery, the same thing holds true for jumping your bike off a car battery, this should only be done as a last resort.

They make chargers that are not specifically maintainers and maintainers that aren't meant to be charges and hybrids that can charge and maintain batteries for the smaller batteries used in ATV's, motorcycles etc. that put out 1.5 to 2 amps, using anything else, and your taking chances.

If you get one of these chargers make sure you're getting one for what you need to accomplish (charge, maintain or charge/maintain) and amps that are 2 or less. If you are needing to charge and you have a charger, what you need to do is generally put it on the battery and leave it overnight, in the morning your battery should be fully charged.

 

I hope he didn't blow out his coil and electronic ignition.