So - bikers - laid up your bike for the winter?

gubble

@manicguitarist - for winter i'd be cleaning the MV with a toothbrush and placing it in the living room as an ornament.  In my mind it's the most beautiful motorcycle ever made and yours is in the only colour to have an MV in.

Oh how i miss motorbikes  

manicguitarist

Why thank you. And yes, she has been cleaned with a toothbrush. And also...in previous times my bikes alternated each year in the conservatory with tinsel and lights on them! Jnr has told me that when we get our next house we have to make sure the bikes can get inside the house. He’s ace.

Hattigol

I come to work every day on my Vespa, whatever the weather. 

But I think it's pretty well known that us scooterists are harder than bikers, right?

Dominic

Lovely bike........proper bobber style but it looks like you need the front fender

57Deluxe

yep about 6 weeks ago. I slathered it up in WD40 and Vaseline and added an extra layer of plastic sheet under the top cover just to be sure as the cover is getting dry and brittle now. Is sad I have to keep it out in all weathers but the lockup garage is even wetter! Still, the Robin likes sitting on it, so probbo worth it.

BenSirAmos

Hattigol said:

I come to work every day on my Vespa, whatever the weather. 

But I think it's pretty well known that us scooterists are harder than bikers, right?

But you wear skirts

boogieman

manicguitarist said:

boogieman said:

I’ve only heard this secondhand on a bike forum so it could well be internet bullshit, but trickle chargers are supposedly not good for the battery if left on full time. Even the smart charging ones can allegedly knacker the battery over time. There is a way round it: plug the charger into a timer and only have it running for a couple of hours, two or three times a day. Enough to keep the battery fully charged but it won’t get fried.  Could be total nonsense, but I’ve got mine set up that way and everything has been fine over the last couple of winters. 

Lead acid batteries don't have a limited charge cycle. Keeping them on charge is essentially the same as keeping the engine running. All the charger is doing is replacing the alternator and reg/rec in the absence of the engine.

Here something I wrote about batteries for other forums....
===================================================================

Batteries.

There has been a fair amount of discussion on various pages about batteries and them failing. And blaming this bike or that bike or whatever.

So anyways here's a bit of science. I'll be using the battery from my MV F3 as an example. This is an 8.6Ah battery. Your battery is probably bigger (physically) than this.

What does this mean? Well, it means it can deliver power equivilent to 8.6Amps for 1 hour, or any combination thereof. 1A for 8.6hrs for example. This is a huge simplification as the temperature of the battery (there is less available charge when cold), and the actual current draw (it becomes less efficient the higher the current draw) all affect things...but it'll do as a start.

Now - unless there is a fault on your charging system (see the end for how to diagnose) if the battery fails it *is not* the fault of your bike. No matter what the make of the bike.

If an automotive battery drops below 10V it is probably toast. How could this happen? Well, lets say you have an alarm - say the alarm that was on my old R1 - a Ross Meta 351A.

This draws 10mA when armed.

So, this tells me that in 860hrs the battery will be completely drained if there is no charging going on. However, the battery will be completely killed long before that - if a battery gives up around 3/4 its charge without recharging...it'll probably be good for nothing soon after.

So...in 645hrs of not riding the battery is knackered. Just over 3 weeks. Less if the weather is cold. Like winter. When we don't ride.

You might be able to recharge the battery and "recover" it - however it won't hold as much charge as it used to.

On older bikes this wasn't such a massive problem - as you switched them off, and then they were off - any alarms aside. But modern bikes have ECUs that are "smart". They hold custom maps and a clock and trip counters and all that - that is stored in RAM and needs power even when you switch the bike off.

So, put an alarm on a modern bike - and hey, lets have a tracker too and you're probably looking at 45mA drain...on my F3 that means just under 8 days before the battery needs replacing.

This is why my MV came with a battery trickle charger.

But but, you shout, I keep my bike on a trickle charger and the battery still died after 18mnths....WTAF?!

Well, consider this - at the dealer where you bought your bike. Were all the bikes on trickle chargers? Didn't think so. A good dealer will uncrate a bike, fully charge the battery before connecting it, do the PDI and then disconnect the battery - and fully charging the battery before storing it.

And only reconnect the battery when the bike is about to be driven away sold. And when they get a second hand bike in...they'll do the same. If your bike was sitting on the shop floor for a couple of weeks with the battery connected....yeah...you will need a new battery.

How to test your battery (see attached image).

And to test your charging system - start the bike and rev the engine to about double idle speed (I was going to say 5000RPM, but that'd screw with big v twins etc)..the voltage across the terminals should read above 14V and below 15.5V

If it is below 14V it might be that your battery is quite flat and is drawing all the charge it can take - but if the battery is fully charged then it shows that either your generator is knackered or (like in my 20yr old RVF) the original wiring loom is rubbish and taking too much power. Get someone to look it at and check it out, your battery will keep going flat if you don't.

If you're reading above 15.5V chances are your reg/rec is on the way out - get this fixed ASAP as it will boil your battery (cheap to replace)and possibly burn out your ECU (not cheap to replace).

Oh, yeah. Even if all the above is perfect, absolutely perfect - batteries die with age anyways after around 3 or 4 years. They are a consumable item.

=================================================================================

Nice work, that explains it all really well. So the “Bloke On The Internet Said” advice I quoted above is bollocks then. Why am I not surprised. 

manicguitarist

If you have a lithium battery it will be a different matter...but all a tricker charger does (a proper one...as opposed to an old style car battery charger - which was a current source rather than a volt source) is keep the battery at around 14.5V - same as it would be if the engine was running.

Phil_aka_Pip

@p90fool's bike is a Royal Enfield and I wants ONE!

p90fool

Phil_aka_Pip said:

@p90fool's bike is a Royal Enfield and I wants ONE!

It is indeed, I did that one as a sort of dirt bike/tracker thing - I built my other one in a more vintage style, sometimes with telescopic forks and occasionally with old Norton girders.

http://i67.tinypic.com/6zmsz7.jpg

Nunogilberto

Nah. Passed my Mod 2 the other day so I plan on riding as much as I can, as long as conditions allow.

manicguitarist

^^^ good man.  

p90fool

Nunogilberto said:

Nah. Passed my Mod 2 the other day so I plan on riding as much as I can, as long as conditions allow.

Well done. I did attempt to become a fair weather rider about 20 years ago by taking my bikes off the road for the winter, but I ended up taxing one of them again that Christmas.

It's not a macho thing for me, it's just that I've had so many fantastic winter rides over the years and don't want to look back in my dotage and feel I only lived half a life. 

I do understand the depreciation issue though, my bikes all end up pretty battle scarred, just like my guitars.