So, Roynie and I got home safely about a month ago, parked the bikes up in the garage, stuck them both on trickle charge and, frankly, haven't been near them since - until last week, when we rolled them out to give them a bit of a wash. Would they start to ride them back in? Hell, no. Of course not. 
Roynie's issue was simple user error. He hadn't switched the socket on, so the charger hadn't been working. But mine was a bit of a mystery. The BMW charger was working and (according to R) the display was showing the battery as charged. (I was busy when he disconnected the charger, so I didn't see the display myself.) Whatever. When we came to try and start the bike, there wasn't even enough charge in the battery to light the dash.
We lifted the tank and checked the battery. A couple of the cells were quite dry, so we topped it up and tried charging again. It was quickly obvious that it wasn't charging correctly. Ok, so the battery is f*ck*d and I need a new one. But, hang on? This is the third battery I've had since we left in April ....
The first was a newish Odyssey, which died during the nine weeks that the bike was left in Moscow. The Russians had apparently never seen an Odyssey battery before and told me that it had died because it was a 6V battery and too weak for the bike. The mechanic is a nice guy, and a friend of a friend, but has very little English and I was in no position to argue as I don't speak Russian - but, surely, that isn't true, is it? I know a lot of you use Odyssey batteries and I've never had a problem with it before.
Seemingly, the Russians don't go in for sealed or gel batteries, so the Odyssey was replaced with a standard Yuasa wet cell. We didn't treat it very kindly, it has to be said, as I only rode the bike a few kilometres before it was put on a train to Irkutsk ... where it had gone completely flat and we had all sorts of fun and games trying to start the bike on a station platform.
All seemed ok from Irkutsk to Ulaanbataar and the bike got me back as far as Mariinsk, where we took another unscheduled break in our ride while Roynie recovered from surgery for a broken leg. (We like to do things in pairs.
)
I put the bikes on a truck to Moscow and, when we collect them from the transport depot three weeks later, the new battery had gone flat. On inspection, the cells were completely dry - but, at the time, we put this down to the bike having fallen on its side on the truck! (Apart from the battery, the 1150 was pretty much undamaged. Roynie was less lucky. Please don't ask me why I didn't put the bikes on a train. There's no perfect science as hindsight ...) Anyway, we topped the battery up and tried to charge it, but it wouldn't hold a charge and had to be replaced with battery #3.
Eventually, we left Moscow for our final dash across Europe. The bike ran fine for the ten days it took us to get home, but ... I noticed that, despite the high mileage, each morning the bike was having difficulty starting. If I didn't know better, I would have said the symptoms looked like a flat battery ....
Sorry for the long story. If you're still with me, the reason I'm posting here is that we met up with a bunch of friends yesterday and two of them suggested that it sounded as if the batteries were boiling dry due to too much charge going into them and that this might indicate a 'regulator' (or 'rectifier') issue - two guys, two different words for the same thing - not sure which is correct.
Does this sound plausible and, as I'm going to have to put another new battery on the bike, am I likely to kill it with a trip of 200km to the nearest dealer? Or do you have any other suggestions as to what might be going on with all these batteries?
Thanks in advance.
Roynie's issue was simple user error. He hadn't switched the socket on, so the charger hadn't been working. But mine was a bit of a mystery. The BMW charger was working and (according to R) the display was showing the battery as charged. (I was busy when he disconnected the charger, so I didn't see the display myself.) Whatever. When we came to try and start the bike, there wasn't even enough charge in the battery to light the dash.
We lifted the tank and checked the battery. A couple of the cells were quite dry, so we topped it up and tried charging again. It was quickly obvious that it wasn't charging correctly. Ok, so the battery is f*ck*d and I need a new one. But, hang on? This is the third battery I've had since we left in April ....
The first was a newish Odyssey, which died during the nine weeks that the bike was left in Moscow. The Russians had apparently never seen an Odyssey battery before and told me that it had died because it was a 6V battery and too weak for the bike. The mechanic is a nice guy, and a friend of a friend, but has very little English and I was in no position to argue as I don't speak Russian - but, surely, that isn't true, is it? I know a lot of you use Odyssey batteries and I've never had a problem with it before.
Seemingly, the Russians don't go in for sealed or gel batteries, so the Odyssey was replaced with a standard Yuasa wet cell. We didn't treat it very kindly, it has to be said, as I only rode the bike a few kilometres before it was put on a train to Irkutsk ... where it had gone completely flat and we had all sorts of fun and games trying to start the bike on a station platform.
All seemed ok from Irkutsk to Ulaanbataar and the bike got me back as far as Mariinsk, where we took another unscheduled break in our ride while Roynie recovered from surgery for a broken leg. (We like to do things in pairs.
) I put the bikes on a truck to Moscow and, when we collect them from the transport depot three weeks later, the new battery had gone flat. On inspection, the cells were completely dry - but, at the time, we put this down to the bike having fallen on its side on the truck! (Apart from the battery, the 1150 was pretty much undamaged. Roynie was less lucky. Please don't ask me why I didn't put the bikes on a train.
There's no perfect science as hindsight ...) Anyway, we topped the battery up and tried to charge it, but it wouldn't hold a charge and had to be replaced with battery #3.Eventually, we left Moscow for our final dash across Europe. The bike ran fine for the ten days it took us to get home, but ... I noticed that, despite the high mileage, each morning the bike was having difficulty starting. If I didn't know better, I would have said the symptoms looked like a flat battery ....
Sorry for the long story. If you're still with me, the reason I'm posting here is that we met up with a bunch of friends yesterday and two of them suggested that it sounded as if the batteries were boiling dry due to too much charge going into them and that this might indicate a 'regulator' (or 'rectifier') issue - two guys, two different words for the same thing - not sure which is correct.
Does this sound plausible and, as I'm going to have to put another new battery on the bike, am I likely to kill it with a trip of 200km to the nearest dealer? Or do you have any other suggestions as to what might be going on with all these batteries?
Thanks in advance.
