Batteries and battery tenders

[acollins45@hotmail.com]

Is there any specific battery brand that people have had good luck with? I used to think Interstate was the best, but now I'm not sure there is a nickels worth of difference in any of them. They all seem to die after 3 years or so.

Same question with battery tenders. I have a box full of dead ones from just about any brand you can name, at all price ranges. I think they are programmed to crap out at about 18 months. The interstate guy told me unplugging them once a month for 30 seconds or so was the key, but I didn't see that helped at all.

Thanks,

Allan Collins

[wytfut]

the battery listed here on the cross reference page is the OEM. And quite frankly a large portion of owners have had very good luck with them. Although far from the norm, Dennis Bennett had way over 15 years on his OEM, before it gave up the ghost. This would be a good place here and now for posters to speak up with their favorite.

https://xhmotorcycles.com/pages/tech/downloads.html

I've personally shopped around and currently am using a Yuasa AGM. There are distinct advantages and disadvantages to AGM, and thought I'd give Yuasa's product a try.

To keep things simple, and double checked.... run your X with a volt meter on the battery. I know you know about our stator issue, may want to check out it's output. When idling it should be charging way over 12 volts (I'm comfortable with 13.4+).

When our stators start going bad, they'll can still charge over 12 volts.... which may/may not get you going at the next start. 

We'll see Greg Cifu pop in here I'm sure, with his expertise too... soon

Bruce

[Donkey Hotey]

Nothing to really add with regard to battery brands. I'm always surprised to hear these tales of batteries lasting more than 3 or 4 years.


The thing I want to warn everyone about:


Some batteries out there have got sheet metal terminals on them. I have personally never bought one of them. Doug Hoffelt and I were recently helping Harvey Jackson with 1526. He has one of these batteries. It's very dangerous on our bikes.

As it is, this type of battery can and will short against the battery cover. I burned my finger so badly that it took weeks to heal. I was pushing the battery cover into place. It contacted the positive terminal and as soon as the battery strap screw grounded, the cover heated up instantly and burned my thumb. We had to find a rubber pad to wrap the side of the battery. I would have personally bought a new battery. No way I'd have one of these on my Super Xs.

If you look closely at these two terminals, the cast lead terminal on the left is what we had on the original battery. Most compatible batteries are made this way.

There are some low-cost options available on eBay, Amazon, etc, that have the sheet metal terminal style shown on the right. If you look closely, that vertical face of that sheet terminal is able to contact the battery cover. On Harvey's battery, it even stuck out just a little further. A very, very bad combination.

[wytfut]

YIKES!!!
I have not seen these. Will be on the look out... china built crap?

[Donkey Hotey]

There seems to be a bunch of them out there. I've seen those terminals on other sizes in the past. My first worry was always vibration. Would that terminal style break off? Then Harvey's bike shorted out. I avoid them.

[acollins45@hotmail.com]

Thanks for the input. I'm using AGM now, and was looking at Yuasa. They are very popular in Europe, I had 1 in a Vulcan I had when I lived in North Macedonia.

AC

[wytfut]

Yup..... mine is a AGM YUASA

[Blaumax]

I got tired of replacing lead acid batteries every three years. Admittedly, the bike sits for weeks and sometimes months without a charger or tender attached so I can't blame the chemistry entirely. I've owned 1910 for over two decades so I've seen a few batteries. For the last 8 years I've been following a certain Li-ion chemistry that few have probably heard of. It's not as energy dense as NCA, NMC or LFP so most have likely never heard of it. It's Lithium Titanate Oxide (LTO) and it's easily the most durable of the various ternary and LFP flavors possessing four or five times the charge cycle life and capable of delivering huge amperage even at -20C. While it's not ideal for EV traction batteries it is just may be better than lead acid for many 12V applications. Unfortunately, until recently, it's always been prohibitively expensive. LTO is known for accepting huge C-rates (charge and discharge), having very wide operational temperatures -20C to 60C, and amazing cycle life but with a cell voltage of only 2.4V it was never available in 12V form. I had contemplated building my own 12V battery from six 30Ah LTO cells wired in series. They're available from eBay for about $50 each but after adding the necessary BMS I felt the cost wasn't worth the gamble.
Recently however, new 12V LTO options have become available for around $200 so I gave in and bought one from TYKOOL. It's their LTT20L-BS (or LTT20-BS if you want the orientation of the terminals switched). I've only had it about two months so far but no issues to report. My SuperX now cranks as well as it ever has. I just tried it this morning after letting it sit for nearly 3 weeks and it cranked over like it had been sitting on a tender. I was initially worried about the low 10Ah rating and the resting voltage falling below 12.6V. It will take a 14.5V charge and hold above 13.5V for a few days after turning off the bike but it will slowly settle down to about 12V. Letting it sit for 3 weeks (with several nights falling into the low 40's) didn't seem to affect it one bit though. The voltage seems to settle after a week or two and hold at about 12.0V. I suspect that in order to keep costs down they used cheaper 5Ah cells in a 6S2P arrangement.
Anyway, I'll be the guinea pig for this test. We'll see how it holds up in the heat. I'll update as the Summer goes on.