R1200R LC Battery

[Neil W]

The battery on my brother in laws 2017 R1200R has gone flat sitting in storage since he had a knee replacemt in August so went to remove it , he had a fully charged BMW battery off another 2016 R1200r sitting in my garage on charge (given it by a lad he bought a set of pannier rails who had bought it from a main dealer last year in error )

Anyhow the charged battery we had is a BMW branded Yuasa YTX14BS but the one fitted to the bike was again a BMW branded Yuasa but a YTZ14S, same length and width but the 14S is 110mm tall whereas the 14BS is 145mm tall .

The bike had a piece of easily removable moulded foam below the smaller battery complete with a moulded in BMW part number , without this fitted the taller battery is a straight swap .

Question is when and why did BMW start fitting the physically smaller battery ?

Both are the same outputs but the smaller battery is £20 plus more expensive , looks like his old battery is b*ggered and when charged it failed a drop test so cannot see any reason not to put the 14BS on it as a cheaper replacement

 

[wessie]

I fitted the 14BS battery to my R1200RS when the original died after 5 winters. My bike was a Euro 3 2016 bike and had the bigger battery as standard, made by Yuasa. Replacement was Exide.
There was a mild refresh of the bike for the 2017 model year to meet Euro 4 emissions and upgrade the quickshift mechanism so maybe they changed the battery to a smaller unit to save a few grammes or euros?

 

[Neil W]

Yes , starting to think it is something that , possibly bringing the R model into line with the batteries fitted to the GS/GSA LC models as they have the smaller battery (suppose it would help with the supply chain )