Just a quick one, if anyone want to link to anything handy rather than explain again then that's fine....

Tonight I shall almost certainly be replacing my battery as despite the charging circuit making perfectly adequate numbers at anything above a couple of grand, the battery seems happy to live at 12.6V or a bit less when left overnight or longer. Everything else stacks up OK, so I figure that the battery is probably not all that happy (we shall see...).

Anyway, I have a spare battery waiting to be activated. The instructions are sparse, mentioning nothing more than the blindingly obvious in broken English such as don't use the fluid to make a cup of tea or brush your teeth with. I'm sure last time I just filled the thing up with the solution that it came with, then bunged it on the bike. I've seen so many different bits of advice that I'm not entirely sure what my plan of action should be.

Fill it up an use it?
Fill it up and leave it overnight before using?
Fill it up, stick it on my Optimate overnight and then use it?

I'm leaning towards the latter two, most possibly the last one. You'd think direct instructions wouldn't be so hard to include!

Id go with, open bin, drop battery into it

No seriously i think the instructions that came with the last one i had of this type said fill it up, leave to settle (overnight should be fine) then stick on charge.

Personally mate id steer clear of batteries that are self fill as they tend to be the cheaper kind and both of the 2 i bought trying to do it on the cheap fucked up in under 6 months which is false economy as i ended up going to buy a decent one in the end.

Hi, yeah DM says, fill it up, make sure levels are right then charge it up over night. I've only ever had self fill batteries, and been in use for years and never had a problem if its done right.
Cheers
Ian

Have to say I'm sure the bike had one when I got it, and it did about seven years or so. I don't think the current one has beeen helped by my previous reg/rec issues flattening it quite a few times. If it turns out I need to use this one and it goes wonky in short order, I'll seek out something a little more exotic next time....

Interesting. The battery was showing 12.54V after not being used for over a month, and the bike fired up at the first time of asking, notwithstanding it churning slightly longer than usual due to having been stood.

I have Nightbreakers fitted after doing the relay mod, so I'm getting 12.3-12.4V at idle (14.0 if I press the starter button enough to switch the lights off). 2.5K was giving a whisker over 13V, and 4K plus was 13.8V.

Not sure what to do now. Do I conclude that my previous experience of it returning not much better than 12.6V the day after being used with a freshly recharged battery means that it is on the way out, and use the new battery, or do I keep using it and see what happens?

Drunkn Munky wrote: Personally mate id steer clear of batteries that are self fill as they tend to be the cheaper kind and both of the 2 i bought trying to do it on the cheap fucked up in under 6 months which is false economy as i ended up going to buy a decent one in the end.

Self-fill are usually self-fill for shipping purposes. If done right, they're every bit as reliable as pre-filled ones.

Fill it with the supplied acid, let it stand for 30 minutes, the put it on an Optimate or similar overnight.