Optimate killed my battery?

OK, the situation is this: Being now numbered among the company car
drivers, and away from home a fair bit, the bike has had very little
usage over the last 3 years.

The garage doesn't have power, so took the battery out, plugged it
into an Optimate, charged it up, green lights, everything fine. I
thought, batteries keep most of their charge if not being used, I seem
to recall reading about a 10% drop in charge per month. So, thinks I,
I'll forget about the continuous trickle charge of the Optimate, and
I'll just switch it on for a day or two every month.

This seemed to work OK, but in March this year, I found that it took
almost 2 days showing "charge", obvious smell of hydrogen, and after a
few days the red "weak" light came on. Oh well, que sera, that battery
was at least 4 years old.

Bought a new battery, sealed for life gel one from Tanya electrical,
arrived the next day. Wasn't going out, so put it on the Optimate,
charged up and showed green in a couple of hours - they obviously send
them out freshly charged. Put battery in bike, everything's
rickety-boo, put it back on the Optimate until green until the next
weekend, etc.

Now, 2 months later, I switch on the Optimate again ready for the
weekend, it takes 2 days to charge, obvious smell again, and although
it shows green at first, leaving it on, a day later it shows a red
"poor" light.

Is this just bad luck, or can sticking a battery on an Optimate after
a month of sitting around off the bike just kill it? Should I buy
another new battery, and this time, should I just leave it on the
bike, and only do anything to the battery if the bike won't start when
I want it to?

Suggestions, advice, death threats, hate mail: to the usual address,
please.

 

Batteries usually survive quite well for long periods if kept trickle
charged at least once every 3 months. This is not the first post with an
Optimate being at the centre of the mystery... maybe they're not so much
use for this type of duty as a traditional charger.

Fwiw, I just bung a small conventional charger every few weeks on any
laid-up batteries. It works well enough, but on old batteries you
daren't miss a charge.

 

It was round about Sun, 28 May 2006 19:11:56 +0100,, when the famed
Grimly Curmudgeon of the dreaded Hand-Crafted Abuse From The Emerald
Isle was struck by a sudden insight:

TYVM. But, ATM I should probably still buy (yet another) new battery,
right?

 

If it's only 2mths old it's still under warranty and you can lob it back
at them. Any new battery should take being left for a couple of months.

 

They may say that it has been drained.
Even a 10ma load would flatten and kill a bike battery in two months.

 

True. All bets are off.

 

Grimly Curmudgeon wrote

Yeah there do seem to be the odd instance here and there but this may be
down more to the coincidence of gifted battery fucker-upppers being the
kind of folks who think that buying an Optimate will solve all of their
battery problems.

I freely admit to abusing batteries without any regard both in respect
of charging, discharging and general maintenance and don't seem to
suffer any of the problems you lot get. Mind you I am not really the
type who likes to leave a bike unridden so maybe that has something to
do with it.

 

Eiron wrote

So that is 240milli Ampere hours/day and say a 12 Ampere hour battery,
works out to 50 days and doesn't take into additional loss from self
discharge and the negative effects of low temperatures on total
available charge. So probably more like 5 weeks, less in the depths of
winter.

 

If you leave the Optimate connected to the battery but not connected to the
mains it will destroy your battery. It continues to do it's little test of
the battery every so often which discharges the battery to destruction. Been
there, done that, when wife unplugged Optimate to plug Lawn Mower in.

Iggy

 

This sounds about right. My bike overcharges, (can't remember what the
voltage was) but over charging doesn't have to kill a battery, infact
mine is proving very resilient. It has almost boiled dry on a couple
of occaisions yet comes back to life when adding de-ionised water. The
trusty old battery in my car however, completely died when I left the
interior light on for a few days, nothing I tried could save it.
Simon

 

Mine started doing shit like that. Killed one battery and started on
another. It was an old (original) Optimate.

I bought a new Optimate (III ?) and no more problems.

HTH
Tom

 

1) It's a fit-and-forget thing that will automatically charge the
battery when needed. Why try to second guess it? If you're going to
faff around unplugging it, just get a cheap normal charger.

2) (as suggested up there) Have you left it connected to the battery
when it's unplugged?

 

My experience with Optimate...

OK so I haven't used the Sprint ST for a while. I never left the
Optimate connected either. So about four weeks ago I tried to start her.
No luck the battery was flat as a pancake. Connected up the Optimate and
sure enough the second (from bottom in all cases) led lit up. Left it
for a while to sort itself out and it went down to the first LED. OK
fair enough I though, I'll leave it for a week or so like folks say to
do. I went back to have a look and it was still on the bottom LED. I
checked the voltage and it was about 12.8V charging. This sounded a bit
low so I attached my regular charger. Whatever setting I had it on 6,4
or 2 Amp it was charging at about 14.4V with approx 2amps. Left that
going at 2 amp setting for a day. Reconnected the Optimate. Now the
second LED was lit up again and stayed on LED 2 this time. Another few
days and it hadn't moved. So I put the regular charger back on and left
it for a week. The charging current dropped to nothing on the dial and
the Voltage was about 14.2V. Looked good. So I connected the Optimate
back up and after half hour on LED 2 It changed to LED 3. About an hour
later it changed to LED 4. Good so the battery is now OK according to
Optimate. Worth remembering before rushing out to buy a new battery
because Me Optimate says it's dead. It's now 5 weeks later and the
Optimate still says it's OK I.E. LED 4.

This has been a public service announcement on behalf of ST society.

 

It was round about Mon, 29 May 2006 05:14:18 -0500,, when the famed
Christofire of the dreaded was struck by a sudden insight:

[..]

But I've already got the Optimate, so didn't want to buy another
charger.

Guilty. How come it does its test thingy if it isn't connected to the
mains, though?

 

It was round about Mon, 29 May 2006 12:16:49 +0100,, when the famed
eric the brave <""simonb_at_zapik_dot_co_dot_uk\"@foo.com (eric the
brave)"> of the dreaded Very Good Thank You. was struck by a sudden
insight:

[..]

Thanks for that. New cheap charger, tenner or so? New battery, 50
quid-ish. I'll give it a go, thanks.

Damn decent of you, so it is.

 

It was round about Sun, 28 May 2006 18:17:27 GMT,, when the famed
wessie of the dreaded ntl Virgin ADSL News Service was struck by a
sudden insight:

Yebbut the old battery worked just fine when it was on the bike and
said bike was used daily, year-round. Only change has not been using
the bike, taking the battery out and using the Optimate. It's sat in
this room, it says "desulfate" now.
--
PacMan
"I loathe people who keep dogs.
They are cowards who haven't got
the guts to bite people themselves."
- August Strindberg

 

I'd guess that it doesn't specifically test the battery, but due to the
way the unit is put together there is a way for some wastage somewhere.
This must be what is discharging the batteries. It is designed to be
always left on, or removed from the battery, or so it would seem.

 

Oh, you thick ****. I mean, really, really thick. Bear, I know what
you feel about the high level of thickness required for a YTC#, but
what's the chance of this making it? I mean, not only doing it, but
asking what the problem could possibly be caused by as well? Think
about it. eh?

--
_______
..'_/_|_\_'. Ace (brucedotrogers a.t rochedotcom)
\`\ | /`/ GSX-R1000K3
`\\ | //' BOTAFOT#3, SbS#2, UKRMMA#13, DFV#8, SKA#2, IBB#10
`\|/`
`

 

Diode leakage, iwt.

 

You might like this:-

"The Car and Deep Cycle Battery FAQ has been updated. The current
version is 5.4, dated April 1, 2006 and can be found on
www.batteryfaq.org."

It does go on a bit but it looks pretty good to me.