• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

Dead Flat battery starting..

Struth!! Thanks everyone.
I like Coffee's idea.. And I've seen them in large car batteries. A seperate smaller battery contained in the main battery with just enough for one start... Wonder if there is something like that out there? Anyone? The capacitor is a good idea as well? What size/type are you using?
 
Joliet;17073 said:
I went out for a ride a couple of months ago and when I went to start my bike there was nothing, I don't have any idea how many volts were in the battery, but not enough to run the fuel pump, and the starter didn't even wiggle when I pushed the button.

I had never kick started the bike before and wasn't sure I even wanted to try. I pulled it up next to a big log and on the first kick I heard the fuel pump pumping. Several kicks later it fired. I kick started it out on the trail half a dozen time that day, it started surprisingly easy.

By the time we got back to the truck at the end of the day, it finally turned over and started with the button. When I got home I put the Tender JR. on it and it charged for quite a while, but the green light came on that told me it was fully charged, but several days later it was dead again. So I replaced the battery.

I have to admit that my dead battery experience with my 08 TE 510 was a very positive one. I am almost glad it happened, I now have much more confidence in my bike. :)Ken
Click to expand...

Does your "Battery Tender" have this wonderful feature?:banghead:

"Before you connect the "BatteryMINDer" to your battery, test the battery for any
shorted cells and check the voltage in the battery. The battery has to have a minimum
resting voltage of 11 volts before the unit will turn on. Resting voltage
means that the battery has not been charged or discharged within 8 hours minimum.
If you test a battery that has not rested for at least 8 hours, you will get
incorrect, inaccurate readings.
1. Test your battery first before you connect it to the BatteryMINDer. See page 2
for more information on testing the battery. See page 5 for more information
about installing the BatteryMINDer inside or outside of the equipment.
2. Check the voltage in your battery. If the resting voltage is less than 11 volts,
use a regular charger to charge the battery to full voltage before connecting
the BatteryMINDer to it. The BatteryMINDer does not turn on if the voltage is
lower than 11 volts.

5. The green indicator lights when the proper connection is made. The green
light is powered by the battery and lights up even when the BatteryMINDer is
not plugged in an electrical outlet.
6. Plug the BatteryMINDer into an AC electrical outlet as soon as possible after
you have made the connection to the battery. Note: The unit will use the
power from your battery and drain the battery if you do not plug it into an
electrical outlet.
7. The red indicator lights to show that there is AC power going into the unit. If
the red light does not come on, check you outlet to make sure that it is
switched on. The red light stays on unless the outlet is switched off or the
BatteryMINDer has failed."

Don't ask me if I took those lights for granted once or twice! :excuseme: 11 volts to charge, eh...
 
flyingbob;17380 said:
Does your "Battery Tender" have this wonderful feature?:banghead:

"Before you connect the "BatteryMINDer" to your battery, test the battery for any
shorted cells and check the voltage in the battery. The battery has to have a minimum
resting voltage of 11 volts before the unit will turn on.
Click to expand...

My Battery Tender Jr does not have that 'feature' - it will slowly try to charge a battery safely from any condition. It just charged up a dead car battery (10V -> 12.5V) but it took a few days.

It has (tried) to charge batteries with 2 shorted cells & discharged... 5-6V....but could not do so - but gave a valiant effort.

I tested it over a wide variety of conditions with many batteries, checked the voltage every hour while connected - absolute perfection. Highly recommend the Battery Tender Jr. I used to design automotive test equipment a few lifetimes ago. They are only $20 on sale.
 
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