A bad day and BMW batteries...

[deaninkl]

Last Friday I had my weekly ride home in front of me on a nice sunny afternoon. Got across the border into Malaysia, filled up with gas and click...no fire uppy....feck. Call local BMW and ask if they have a battery, no, they dont keep bike spare in Johor Baru, but for 22quid they can come out and help me start the bike. OK, they come bike starts off their stater unit and off they go, I go to pull away and the fekker dies again call BMW again and the come back (an hour later) this time they wait for me to pull away. Now I have a 360km journey ahead of me, and I've never done this without stapping for fuel. but worked out it will be a very close call. But it would have cost 200 quid to truck the bike home so worth a shot.

Cruising the highway at 90-100 kmh is boring, but I have an eye on the fuel gauge. I get to within about 10km of home and just off the highway and every light on the bike starts to flash and the rev counter and speedo neadle go haywire and she dies. I push a short distance to a resturant and leave the bike. In the morning I drive to the bike but it won't start with jump leads. I go to BMW and hand over 170 pounds for a new battery and it fire up fisrt time. I hope all is well but have yet not had the time to check out the altinator, or altinator belt.

Now, they real annoying thing is I have another battery on order, a Yuasa, as I've had 4 BMW batteries in 4 and a half years, although the last one is 2 and a hold years old. I ordered the new one only last week antisipating the current one would die soon. Anyway I'll have to speak to the Yuasa dealer as he may be able to sell it.

But again no warning that the battering was in trouble and no possibility to jump start, yet the BMW starter unit and the new battery worked perfectly, so why can I not start it with jump leads?

the up side is I got about 355km without going onto reserve, (its a GS not GSA) so I'm anticipating 60ish to the gallon, granted it was sedate.

 

[wessie]

If the faulty battery had gone from low resistance to short circuit as you made your journey then that will drain any power you try to put into it from the jump start source. It also explains why the bike suddenly lost all power and died.

I guess your high consumption of batteries is connected with your location & climate. I own a 1150 so have no idea where the 1200 battery is located but my guess it is somewhere that does not get cooled very well. I believe the 1200 battery is physically smaller than the 1150 one, too, which will make is less resilient to changes in ambient temperature.

 

[trainman]

Last Friday I had my weekly ride home in front of me on a nice sunny afternoon. Got across the border into Malaysia, filled up with gas and click...no fire uppy....feck. Call local BMW and ask if they have a battery, no, they dont keep bike spare in Johor Baru, but for 22quid they can come out and help me start the bike. OK, they come bike starts off their stater unit and off they go, I go to pull away and the fekker dies again call BMW again and the come back (an hour later) this time they wait for me to pull away. Now I have a 360km journey ahead of me, and I've never done this without stapping for fuel. but worked out it will be a very close call. But it would have cost 200 quid to truck the bike home so worth a shot.

Cruising the highway at 90-100 kmh is boring, but I have an eye on the fuel gauge. I get to within about 10km of home and just off the highway and every light on the bike starts to flash and the rev counter and speedo neadle go haywire and she dies. I push a short distance to a resturant and leave the bike. In the morning I drive to the bike but it won't start with jump leads. I go to BMW and hand over 170 pounds for a new battery and it fire up fisrt time. I hope all is well but have yet not had the time to check out the altinator, or altinator belt.

Now, they real annoying thing is I have another battery on order, a Yuasa, as I've had 4 BMW batteries in 4 and a half years, although the last one is 2 and a hold years old. I ordered the new one only last week antisipating the current one would die soon. Anyway I'll have to speak to the Yuasa dealer as he may be able to sell it.

But again no warning that the battering was in trouble and no possibility to jump start, yet the BMW starter unit and the new battery worked perfectly, so why can I not start it with jump leads?

the up side is I got about 355km without going onto reserve, (its a GS not GSA) so I'm anticipating 60ish to the gallon, granted it was sedate.

From a technical paper =
Batteries last approximately two thirds as long in hot climates as cold ones. Heat kills batteries, especially sealed wet lead acid batteries.

Not sure you can do much about it, unless you feel like relocating it?

 

[deaninkl]

Thanks for the responces, I was not aware that hot climes kill batteries, but it does make sense and explains my consumpsion of the wee devices. Although I do think the first two were from a bad batch as both failed in less than a year each. The third one is just over two years old. All have just gone without warning and the bike would not start by jumping, that's the real annoying part. In each case it has left me stuck where I was. Luckilly on the other occassions I was relatively close to home. Last week I was 200 miles away.

Anyway, all is well again.

Cheers.