TOPIC:

The bike died on the way home from work tonight,so,I need to use my XT600 tomorrow. As I haven't started it in a couple of months,I pulled the battery to charge it. The problem(?) is that its a sealed battery. Ive no experience with them. Can I charge it on my plain old Ferm charger, or am I going to do damage (to the battery)?
The charger is a regular 12v with a big 6AMP printed on the front between a couple of fuses. The 12v battery says 'Std; 0.9A x 5-10H or Quick 4.0A x 1.0H'
Any help appreciated,Thanks.

If it's a lead acid battery you should be able to charge it. Normally I charge bike batteries at 2 amps or less, to avoid any issues with incomplete de-sulphidization.

hardrockminer wrote: If it's a lead acid battery you should be able to charge it. Normally I charge bike batteries at 2 amps or less, to avoid any issues with incomplete de-sulphidization.

Its a Yuasa YTX9-BS and this is what ive found on it;
. ......Thanks to the Absorbed Glass Matt (AGM) technology, the internal resistance of this maintenance-free battery is low, which translates into a high starting power. After you have filled and mounted the battery, you never have to look at it again. Choose convenience and quality: choose Yuasa.

Characteristics:

Completely maintenance free
Closed and leak-proof
With sulfation retardant
Self-regulating pressure relief valve
The AGM technology provides a great starting power
Lead-calcium technology
Comes empty and with an acid pack
Includes a 12-month warranty

6A is too much. According to the info provided it says 4A for 1 hour for "quick charge."

Aha! Panic over. I managed to borrow an 'Optimate2' from a neighbor. So that's all connected and hopefully ready to go in a couple of hours. Thanks for the advice from the both of you.

Sounds like you solved the issue. For future thought here is a home made charger that I ran across several years ago. It does work, rather well IMO for very little cost. Please keep in mind you do need to keep an eye on it, as it can overcharge it left charging too long of time.

www.alpharubicon.com/elect/3dollarbattggn.htm

Be carefull, European Voltage is 240 Volts not 120 Volts!!!

There is always the popular 50 or 100yr old whatever idea that a motorcycle battery whether it AGM or standard lead acid can "only" be charged at low amps or will be for sure damaged. This for the most part is wrong. The amps any charger provides for the most part will be less than your stator charges at if working correctly. Put the 14.4v a good stator provides, the current can easily be 6a on a discharged battery, and will not be a problem nor will using a 6A charge. If you use 6A and monitor volts and amps, the 6A will only be there for a matter of minutes at best, then fall to 5, 4,3, 2,1 ect quickly til the battery is charged.

I have had the same 6 amp charger for over 40 years and use it on all my car and motorcycle batteries. It has an analog gage to show how much current the battery is drawing. On a small battery, if I feel it's drawing too much current, I put a roll of small wire between the battery and charger to reduce the current. The rule of thumb is a battery should be charged at no more than 10% of it's amp/hour rating. However, as been stated earlier, your bike's charging system will charge at a much higher rate than this evert time you ride it.

UPDATE;
Battery loaded pretty quickly (an hour or two) last night. Fitted it this morning but still couldnt get the bike to start. I think I flooded it and in my impatience I ran the battery down again and took the bicycle to work!!!
After work today, I cleaned the plug and threw the battery back on the Optimate2. Its still charging. Try it again in the morning.
Thanks to everyone for the input.

Check for spark before you fire it up tomorrow.
Just make sure the cylinder isn't full of gas when you do.
Nothing like a flamethrower in your garage.

Wont be doing that. It took me 20 minutes to get the spark plug out today! Seat off,plastics off,tank off! Itll start or it wont.We will see. If it wont then Ill have to wait until the weekend to sort it out. By that time,my regular work bike should be back from the shop (he reckons its a problem with water in the fuel and shouldn't be a big deal to sort).
I dont have a garage. All my bikes are kept on the street and worked on on the street. Thats why I took my work bike to the repair shop. Its too cold to be messing around outside with fuel and carbs etc.(and probably why theres water in the fuel system in the first place!!).
Very frustrating (and embarrassing) having 3 bikes outside and none of them working.