Using a battery tender or similar

Hi All,
Thanks for the feedback I received on my last post in relation to jump starting.

I took on all the good advice and I bought a battery fighter here in Australia. This is similar to the battery tender unit you guys talk about. The unit charges the battery and then goes to a float mode maintaing the battery charge.

Well most of my problems are sorted. The battery now holds a good charge and my bike starts easily all of the time. Gee it even feels better more snap with a fully charged battery.

When I charged the battery I removed the cell caps for the gases etc to escape of course.

However the battery fighter comes with a connection that fits to the battery and a tail that I mounted with cable ties to the frame near the side cover. So when I come back from a ride I simply plug the the battery fighter into the the tail and the unit continues to float charge the battery. I only get a chance to ride once every 2 - 3 weeks so I like to keep the charger on the bike all of the time so she is ready to go all of the time with a fully charged battery.

My question is under float charge should I need to remove the battery cell caps? I do not think I do as it is only charging at a very small rate, however I am unsure. We have just gone from drought conditions here to heavy rain and a cold snap so I need to keep the battery well charged.

Any thoughts? Of course the instructions that come with the charger are not clear and do not cover this.

Cheers: Brad

I also use a battery tender on all my bikes, most of the batteries I use are maintenance free so there is no need for caps.....the ones that do have caps will also have a vent tube so I do not remove the caps.....however I do check the acid level once a month or so when the weather is hot.
I simply park my bikes, plug them in and walk away....it doesn't get any easier than that.....

Cheers Night Train, that makes sense.

I only use a float charger on one of my bikes... an 88 Voyager XII. The battery on the Voyager discharges fairly quickly since it has a couple of voltage users that use voltage with the bike's ignition off... the clock and radio memory are prime culprits and most folks who own this bike use a battery tender or other float charger to keep the battery fresh when the bike is parked.

I do not remove the caps from the battery as it is a bit of a chore to get to the battery. It is under the phony gas tank. To get the phony gas tank off, you have to remove the seat (bolts) and the faux gas tank...

Yea, you don't need to remove the caps. I don't know how your charger compares to the battery tender, but just for info the battery tender is just a simple charger that puts a specific charge into the battery and depending on how discharged the battery is it will naturally be more amps. So it may start at about 1A and get gradually less amps until the battery is fully charged, but even then it continues to supply about 1/2A charge as long as it's hooked up. Regardless of whether the light is red or green, makes no difference in this. The charger never really goes to storage charge or anything real high tech, just as the battery gets more charged it draws less amps from the charger. Other chargers like for MP3 players, cordless tools ect, have a charger that actually senses the charge is full and shuts down near 100% at this time until the battery needs additional charge then turn back on. The battery tender does not do this, so I don't know if I'd leave it on all the time myself.