Can you check alt output at battery?

lance1586 said:
Well for whatever reason my 200 CCA battery isn’t cutting it even when it’s warm. Bought it in Oct no clue. Bike won’t turn if battery is less than 12.9 volts. Well it’s turns about half a turn then stops.
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I've got 4 ST1100s and the MotoBatts spin them just fine in 16 degree F weather.
Sounds like a bad battery not the amount of CCAs or else there is another issue somewhere.
 
Gotcha yeah that’s what I figure too. 500 may be over kill but I don’t care just want it to start hot or cold. Funny thing is bought the bike last Feb and never had any starting issues until fall. Bought that battery and ran it for a while before I parked it for winter and gas carbs rebuilt. Then that one creeped out on me too.
 
I'm gonna guess that the chances that you got two bad batteries in a row is fairly unlikely, but anything's possible.

put a multimeter on the battery terminals and watch it while cranking. If the battery voltage drops down below high-10s then the battery is crapping out. If it stays above that level then you have a voltage drop somewhere in the starter path that's causing the problem.
 
Will do last night tender said charged. Think batt was at 12.9. Took it off and this am tried to start it and it did. At times it hits a “hard spot” and won’t go past it doesn’t sound happy at all. Also, it seems like if I spin the back wheel a little bit and hold the clutch in at 12.9 it WILL start;)

So, I’m going to put the plastic on today hoping I have time before work but probably won’t have time, and when it’s on the ground and charging on its own hoping this hard cranking/ no cranking issue fixes itself:) as I often say at my maintenance job when it goes east “that’s my kinda fix” lol
 
You might have a faulty Ground or stater wiring connection.
Corrosion can drop the actual voltage going to the starter. Also check the Starter relay connections for any corrosion.
 
I don''t know why, but I've seen few suggestions to load test a battery that is suspected of failing. The old way was to put a large resistive load across the terminals while watching the voltage. Most auto garages will do this 30 second test for free. There are now electronic testers that sell for $30 and up that measure internal resistance (an indirect way of checking how much sulfation is present and therefore the reduction in capacity. I have no idea how good (or bad) these testers are.

Two days ago I was trying to decide if I should replace my 4 year old Yuasa battery on my NC750. There were no evident signs of weakness but...it is 4 years old and my rule of thumb is to choose when it gets replaced and not let the battery dictate that at an inconvenient time. After waffling a bit, looking at Amazon cheap batts ($35 and up) and Yuasa's ($108 up to over $200) I called a friend and took the battery to him to use his tester. It said, in all caps, REPLACE. End of uncertainty. After looking at the reviews on Amazon (15% of 2000 reviews were 1 or 2 stars) and remembering my own packages that arrived damaged from them, I popped for a Yuasa from a motorsports shop. Now I'm thinking about getting a load tester....
 
GM will not honour any warranty claim for batteries that were not tested with the newer internal resistance type testers. They couldn't care less about what the result from a load tester is. This has been the case for years. I also remember a study done by GM when I worked at a GM dealership. All batteries that were replaced under warranty North America wide had to be returned to them. The result was that, for various reasons, 90% of them were still good. I have lots of experience with the old load testers. I have no experience with the new electronic internal resistance testers. Maybe they are more accurate.
 
Andrew Shadow said:
GM will not honour any warranty claim for batteries that were not tested with the newer internal resistance type testers.
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I don't have one of those but I did get a TopDon BT20 load tester for my car. You have to enter either CCA or Ah into the tester via an iOS or Android app.

Connect the tester to the battery. Input the required data and start the test. The app records the battery voltage at various stages and can be stored after testing is completed. It also gives a state of battery health — current/present capacity vs capacity when new.

Cranking voltage on the ST could be observed rigging test leads of a DMM to the battery and watching it while starting the bike. But this gave me an opportunity to buy a cool gadget. I'd also need 5' leads to test the battery in my car without removing it. The tester can be used on the ST though it's large-ish clamps might need finessing.

The BT20 manual warns agains using remote battery terminal found in some cars for testing and to test at the batter only. The instruction say WARNING: in big letters and a couple of all CAPS statements.

It rated my car's battery health as BAD which I already knew. So I'll say it's close enough for Govt work. Actually closer I'm sure.
 
ST Gui said:
I don't have one of those but I did get a TopDon BT20 load tester for my car.
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I looked this tester up and find it curious. My first thought was that I'm not sure that I would call that a battery load tester, at least not in the traditional sense that both SMSW and I referred to.

This tester does not seem capable of applying a specific external load to the battery as does a traditional load tester. It requires applying a load by turning on the electrical equipment of the vehicle. That on-board equipment is not capable of applying a load anywhere near as great as what a load tester can, so it most likely doesn't use anywhere near as great a load as what the battery manufacturer would likely specify for a traditional load test.

Internal resistance type testers are completely different from load testers in how they evaluate a battery. This tester seems to be an internal resistance type tester with under load voltage readings thrown in as a bonus. Unless the results obtained using the results that the load that each vehicle's equipment can apply, and they all vary even if they use the same battery group, can somehow be accurately correlated to what the battery manufacturer actually specs for a load test of that battery group, it seems strange to me to refer to this as a load tester. Battery tester yes, load tester I wonder about.

Then again, I have been out of it for a long time and have no familiarity with these types of testers at all, so there is that.
 
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