Battery fine (?) - Optimate says not......

[Deleted account 211025001]

Bit of a strange one this.

My GS is always plugged into an Optimate and is now a year old.

On Saturday, whilst in the garage, I noticed that the red warning light was lit on the Optimate. Great I thought, the curse of the GS12 battery has caught up with me
I decided to have a go at starting the bike and she fired up instantly (this is in a sub zero garage with the bike having stood there for just under a week).

I ran the Optimate over a spare car battery that I have, and know to be good - no warning light, so, I'm assuming the Optimate is not at fault.

Any way, went to go for a ride first thing yesterday and same thing, warning red light on the Optimate but bike started perfectly.

I'm getting a bit paranoid as I'm off on a 6000 mile trip on the bike in a few weeks and the last thing I want is for the battery to fail on me whilst away

Any ideas what may be going on out there please

Andres

 

[cookie]

get a cheapo battery hydrometer from a car bits shop & dip each cell.


supposing it's a lead/acid battery of course

 

[Wapping]

I had a not dissimilar problem on an Optimate connected to a Fireblade.

For some reason or another it switched from Green (happy state) to Red (dead) for no apparent reason, whilst all the while the battery itself was fine. Sometimes it would do it within minutes of being powered up, sometimes over the course of days – all rather hit and miss.

I narrowed it down to either:

(A) A corroded socket (where the flying lead from the battery, connects to the lead from the Optimate)

(B) A break in the lead, within the lead’s plastic sheath itself (either in the flying lead or from the Optimate itself)

(C) A small short somewhere between the lead and the frame of the bike.

SO NOT MUCH NARROWING BUT IT WAS SO IRRATIC I GAVE UP JIGGLING THE WIRES!

Anyway, I bought a new flying lead and all was well, which as nice.

 

[craig614]

Used to get this problem. Was a dodgy connection at the pins in the connector plugs. It just required squeezing them together with a pair of pliers.

 

[Deleted account 211025001]

Dodgy connection - that would make sense

Thanks guys, I'll have a look when I get home tonight.

Andres

 

[chasr]

I had this too. Turned out I was connecting the Optimate with it already plugged into the mains; recycling the mains post connection, or connecting it to the bike then switching the mains on cured the (non-existant) problem.