Bike won't start

[wickedrider]

Bike in question is an '05 Shadow Spirit. It is temperamental in it's starting to say the least. When it starts, it starts right away. Turn the key and it starts. If it doesn't then it clicks and sounds like when a battery is dead in a car. However, the lights and everything else still work. I bought a new battery and it is still doing it.
Should I have charged the new battery? If not the battery, then what? I have been trying to read my service manual, but it is like reading lawyer speak.

[Sev]

Dead battery.

If you just got a new one then it wasn't sufficiently charged when it was first conditioned.

Proper procedure for conditioning a battery is to

fill with acid
let sit 20 minutes to 2 hours depending on manufacturer
charge at 10% of rated amp hours for 10 hours (9 amp hour battery gets .9 amps for 10 hours)
allow to sit for another hour or so
install

You asked if you should have charged it, which means you probable didn't which means the battery might be toast. Get it load tested if you can, otherwise throw it on a charger and see what happens.

[wickedrider]

Thanks. Someone "gave" me a one amp trickle charger when I bought a Superhawk. I charged the old battery for a long time (I forgot about it) and put it in the bike. Now I am going to charge the new one. I didn't have a monitor so I couldn't tell whether the new battery was charged or not. It is a Honda battery from a Honda dealership, so i "assumed" that it was charged.( you know what the say about assuming). Anyway, when I tried the old battery it cranked right up. It also started again after I stopped it. Now I'm not sure whether it's my battery that's temperamental.

[wickedrider]

Sev, a guy at a different dealership told me that a motorcycle battery does not charge while the bike is running as a car does. Consequently, there is no alternator. Is it true that a bike battery will not charge while running?

[BuzZz]

Sev, a guy at a different dealership told me that a motorcycle battery does not charge while the bike is running as a car does. Consequently, there is no alternator. Is it true that a bike battery will not charge while running?

No, that is not right. If the bike has a battery and electric start, it has an alternator.

Many bikes have low-output alternators, mind you, specially older ones. Hence they don't don't have a lot of extra juice to charge the battery at lower RPM. Keep the revs up, and it works fine.

[wickedrider]

Thanks Buzz, I'm glad I didn't buy the battery from that guy or dealership.

[Sev]

Sev, a guy at a different dealership told me that a motorcycle battery does not charge while the bike is running as a car does. Consequently, there is no alternator. Is it true that a bike battery will not charge while running?

If the battery didn't charge while it was running you wouldn't get to ride for more then 2 hours at a time. Then you'd need to stop and recharge the battery.

As BuzZz said, some of the older bikes don't have really high output alternators especially at idle. Though they should be able to put a charge on the battery if you're actually riding it. The faster the engine turns the faster the alternator turns, the faster the alternator turns the more current is produced. This is why it used to be a bad idea to let your bike idle too long - it'd be constantly discharging the battery.

Nowadays a newish japanese bike will be putting out 12-14 amps at idle, and it goes up slightly as the rpms increase. It will charge the battery at idle, but it's not a good way to charge a battery.


When you said you bought a Honda battery... what do you mean? Did they give you a sealed battery with the acid in it? Or did they give you the box where you need to mix everything yourself?

[wickedrider]

No, it's a Honda self-contained battery.