Hey guys and gals,

Made a stupid mistake a couple weeks back. After getting home from a ride, the wife was ready to eat (she thought I'd been gone a little too long ) and was ready to jump in the car when I got home. I turned the ignition to Accessory as I often do to let the tunes play while I de-gear and wipe the bike down.

In my rush to appease the old lady, I grabbed my phone which was playing the tunes and didn't turn the ignition switch to Off. I found it two or three days later, completely dead.

Went today to buy a battery tender and I hooked it up around noon. As of 9:45 pm, when I turn the ignition to the on position, I only get my Neutral light and the oil pressure light. I get no head lamp, no gauges lit up.

Is this normal? I have a solid orange light on the tender, which means it thinks it's charging the battery, but after almost 10 hours it still seems it's as dead as it was when I hooked it up. Am I being impatient, or did I somehow screw up my battery in all of this?

Thanks in advance for the help!

 

You need a battery "charger." Tender is for maintaining & will pretty much "never" resurrect your battery. Go to Wal mart & get a cheap Black&Decker charger & get it going.

 

Yeah, the tender only charges 1/2 amp, you need 6-10 to get her goin

 

http://www.harley-davidson.com/gma/g...7&default=none

That's a link to the product I got...it seems to indicate that it will provide a charge?

 

Nope...trust us & listen now/hear later.

 

Where in NE you from, Ice Man? I'm a Lincoln native, currently live in Sioux Falls, SD

 

This is from the Battery Tender instruction manual.

TIME REQUIRED TO CHARGE A BATTERY:
The Battery Tender® Junior charges at a rate of 0.75 Amps (0.75 Amp-Hours per hour). The Battery Tender® Plus charges at a rate of 1.25 Amps (1.25 Amp-Hours per hour). Therefore, a fully discharged 15 Amp-Hour battery will take approximately 16 hours or 9.6 hours respectively, to recharge to 80% capacity with a Battery Tender® Junior or a Plus. Some large automotive or marine, deep cycle type batteries may take several days to fully recharge.

WORKING WITH A DEAD BATTERY OR A BATTERY WITH A VERY LOW VOLTAGE: If you try to charge a dead battery having a voltage below 3 Volts, the BATTERY TENDER® CHARGERS will not start to charge because an internal safety circuit prevents the battery chargers from generating any DC output voltage.

 

Jump the battery (put another battery in parallel) and charge both batteries. Most chargers will see an agm battery as a shorted battery until it has charged for a few hours. Then you can remove the jumper battery and finish charging the agm battery. There is some good info on this on the optima battery site (faq page) but I cannot figure out how to put a link here on my mobile device.

 

A Battery Tender is designed to maintain a healthy battery. It is NOT a battery charger.

 

A dead battery developed lead oxide on both sets of plates (anode & cathode) and the charger cannot recognize initial polarity nor remove the oxide.
In 1970 I took a dead (Oerlikon) 6V battery for repair; it was disassembled, cleaned, half of it was replaced because of the oxide buildup, filled with acid, resealed with tar and charged. 3 hour later I rode home with it