My battery is at least 3 years old (same battery as when I got the bike from previous owner) and not the original. I've had it on trickle charger when not ridden always for the last 2 yrs. Last month and a half......have only ridden the bike once a week max....30 miles max. New rectifier but in when I first got the bike.....aftermarket one.

Today I rode it for about 20 miles parked at a bike shop......15 min later when I was leaving it wouldn't kick over. Shop guy jumped me and I was good for the 25 mile ride home. It's back on the trickle now.....see if it starts tomorrow.

The techs at the shop said the battery trickle charger only gets you back up to a base charge. I thought it charged it all the way up?

The answer is yes, but slowly.



If your trickle charger has a status light letting you know when it's charging and when it's fully charged, just go by that.

Most do. Mine has 3 lights. Charging, fully charged, and error (can also indicate a bad battery).

If you trickle charge a battery to full and it won't start the bike or it fails to start after a few hours of sitting, the battery has died on you.

Just a thought - check your RR as well

if the RR has problems it could provide enough power to run most of the systems on the bike, but you're pretty much on a total discharge system. Thats the problem my last RR had - sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Replaced it and all is happy.

Replaced the RR with an aftermarket one a few years ago. All has been good since. I forgot how to check the RR again? I have a volt meter.

Second the base charge. I bought a bike a few years back with a bad battery in the winter. It was a trickel all winter and never got the battery charge up. It warm up, went out for 500 mile day and it was fine.

So if you had a trickle charger hooked up to your battery, and the power went off, would a lineman for the county get shocked? I mean, if everybody had their batts on chargers, wouldn't that send a huge back surge over the line?

My battery shows 12.9 DCV when off.