Skip to main content

New Battery?

The weekend showed how weak the battery has become. 

Having had to use the dbPower unit on four separate occasions during the day in Belgium was the giveaway.

We are in the second winter of this problem where the battery isn't strong enough to start the bike.

In the summer it charges and holds that charge and although I keep the dbPower unit to hand I rarely have to use it. 

But in winter it barely has the power to turn the engine over. It's simply "clunk". The lights come on though and that probably doesn't help.

So what to do? Being a fair weather biker nowadays I won't be using the bike that often until the new year.

Do I get a new battery sooner rather than later? It might end up freezing away in the garage. I have a garage in a block away from the house with no power, so a trickle charger is no use either.

I have been looking at a replacement though. 

A Motobatt with a high cranking power should be around £75. So unlikely to break the bank. But when to get it?

Looks like January then. The MoT runs out in early February. Mmmm.

A few years ago when I had a similar situation with the GS I was able to jump it from the car. Then I had the FIAT Punto. The Insignia specifically says never to  jump from it. I have used dbPower on it though when its 🔋 went tits up.

I did buy a large solar panel. It proved to be totally useless.

Labels:

Comments

  1. Troubadour3 December 2019 at 04:07

    Yep, once your battery is dead, there's little hope of bringing it back. If it's the original battery, and your 2nd winter with this problem you've been lucky.
    If you are going to ride much this winter it'd be best to buy a new AGM battery now, otherwise wait til Spring if you can or your new battery will inevitably die.
    Any chance of running a solar panel/battery tender from the roof of the garage to Pepe?

    ReplyDelete
  2. InvictaMoto3 December 2019 at 12:14

    I'm not planning to use the bike that often. The battery may even be the original and be 5 years old. If I can get away with the dbPower to start it on the few times it will go out, then Springtime will be new battery time.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bikers Loft 3

The last day. After leading yesterday's run to Ypres, I decided to take a back seat, or a different place in the line of 8 bikes. And so after a repeat of the previous day's self cook breakfast we packed the bikes and headed off. Aiming for Nieuwpoort aan Zee as the first stop. The plan to follow a canal all the way there to where it meets the sea at a huge marina. I was bringing up the rear of the column and saw a sign like this one. "No Motor vehicles" After only one short section of the towpath/road. We tried to alert those ahead but Cal and I were the only two not heading past this sign. We chose to turn left across a lift bridge onto the other bank, where Nieuwpoort was signposted 15kms away. As we headed along we sounded our horns and waved at the "first wave" to no avail. Some miles further on their side came to an end. By then we were way ahead despite dropping the speed to 40. We carried onto t...
1 comment
Read more

Screen fitted

Today I was working from home after the trains were cancelled and I came home from the station!  I did a bit of work, you can only do what is in front of you on the helpdesk software, and so  I had a late lunch and decided to have a look at the screen fittings. In the end, it was a 90 minute lunch and it is fitted. The four brackets have to be done one at a time, offering up the screen each time before tightening them in place. In the end it looks pretty central.  No time to test it today. That will have to wait until the weekend. Fitted! The instructions are pretty rubbish, and look like an eighth generation photocopy of the original drawing. Still, the photo on Skidmarx website was marginally better. My positioning looks a little different but it seems rigid. Only a test ride will tell if it is okay.
2 comments
Read more

Bikers Loft 2

We were up reasonably after a latish night and the self cook dinner! Breakfast is included in the room rate and is also self service as well as self cook. I'm not used to eating breakfast and so opted for the continental style rather than the bacon and eggs style!  The rooms are pretty basic. I shared with Trevor and we had two single beds. A little re-jigging of the room ensured that there was a man-gap between the beds! Early suggestions for the Saturday ride out had been to the Wire of Death. An electric fence that was built by the German occupation army in 1915 from the coast at Knokke to the German border, and just inside the Belgian frontier. It was to stop Belgians escaping into neutral Netherlands.  Over the course of the war it claimed over a 1000 lives. Read more.  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_of_Death I can't tell you any more as we didn't go!! In the end we decided on Ypres, only  30 miles aw...
1 comment
Read more