Question about my battery

Firstly, it's an Everlast battery that came with the bike, and I've done zero maintenance on it...

My battery has been giving me issues for the past couple months. For a while, I could jump it or push-start it and after like a 10 minute ride it would hold a charge the rest of the day and start just fine after work.

Then it started to not hold a charge at all. I could ride for hours and still have to jump it. I pulled it off the bike today and I cannot see any fluid in it at all, but it shows 12.06 volts on my meter.

My guess would be it was low on fluid, and I gassed out the rest by using my car to jump it. Think it's worth filling it up with distilled water and seeing how it does, or just replacing it when all this snow melts?

The bike wouldn't run if the charging system wasn't able to charge the battery, right (kind of like a car, if the alternator is bad it will die when the batt dies)?

 

Fill it up to the lines; fully charge it and take it to your local auto parts store to have them load test it for you. If it's bad, replace it.

The bike will run with a bad battery, but will start having real issues below 2500rpm or so (when the charging system gets going.)

 

Being low on fluid is just like having a smaller battery. A 12 AH battery half full is a 6AH battery. 1/8 full = 1.5AH. It's all a fully charged 12AH battery can do to start a motorcycle.

When batteries are failing they tend to go down faster too.

 

Ok another question. The only charger I have is a 4 amp car battery charger, which seems like too many amps to charge my bike battery with. To reduce amperage to the bike battery, would it work to hook up the bike battery and a car battery in parallel, to effectively give the bike battery fewer amps? I'm in school to be an electrical engineer, but I just want to make sure I won't fry my batt since I'm broke lol

 

Only if the car battery is discharged too.

You can get a 1 amp trickle charger at Harbor freight for $9.99 (but only if you're unlucky, it's usually on sale for 7.99).

 

another question: actually you want a resistance in series with the battery to limit the current something like a headlight or a brake light bulb
get your meter out

 

Your bike battery should be 10 or 12AH, so a 4AH charger will not blow up your bike battery (as long as you only leave it on for a few hours).

 

Ha I thought of that after I posted. I've got a couple things I'm going to try tomorrow that I think will kick it down a couple amps.

Otherwise I'll charge a few hours at 4 amps, if I kill the battery then oh well, I'd already figured on getting a new one anyways.