First, a little background…
I fed a couple aftermarket and OEM batteries to my dirtbike before clueing in that it wasn’t the batteries that were the problem… it was the charging system cooking them (oh, and now it makes sense why new headlights would burn out 5 minutes after installing them 🙂 ). But happily a new regulator got that sorted, and I rode all last season with the cheapest battery Ebay would send me. Hooray!
But, although I dutifully kept that cheap battery topped off all winter… when it came time to inflate my new tires this spring I took the easy way out… and instead of inflating them with my manual air pump… I just clipped my 12v air compressor to the battery and had both tires full in minutes. Which ran down the battery.
But I didn’t charge it up again.
And 2 months later when I actually wanted to start the bike… it would no longer take a charge. And the top 2 rules for lead-acid tech batteries seem to be 1) don’t discharge them too deeply, and 2) don’t let them sit around discharged. Crap.
OEM Yuasa batteries may be what the bike came with, but they’re stupid expensive (I swear, every time I check the prices seems to have magically gone up $10). And these days lead-acid (or AGM) isn’t the only game in town: lithium-ion batteries have pretty much taken over the consumer electronics market. So I decided to go double-or-nothing… and get an even more expensive lithium battery: sold by TurnTech and E-Batt.
Which one to buy? Well E-Batt was cheaper on their web site, but wanted way too much for shipping to Canada (more than making up the price difference) and TurnTech came in a sturdy looking plastic case with nice thick metal tabs to connect the power wires to. Sold! I ordered it April 11th and it was at my door on the 27th. Sent one email to the owner to make sure my PayPal went through and he responded the same day saying it had, and giving me the USPS tracking number.
The old battery was easy to get at: the WR has an allen bolt at the back of both sides of the seat, in my case it’s also the front mount for the rack:
30 seconds later and I had the top off…
…and 30 seconds later the paperweight had been removed.
Here’s the old battery on the left, and the TurnTech on the right. It’s around 3cm shorter than the original, and a bit lighter:
Lets put it in! Should be a no brainer… I was wondering how I’d have to pad the battery to keep it from moving around under the seat with all that extra space! Wait! What the…???
Dammit! The TurnTech is wider than the original: actually it seems to have a slight taper so it’s wider at the top… and it won’t fit between the frame rails! Here it is again beside the original:
Lovely. Yes, the plastic case on the TurnTech may make it a bit sturdier… but I bet the heatshrink cover on the E-Batt doesn’t have clearance issues. Do I have to return this thing? Well, no, first I had a “Oh… duh.” moment and realized I can drop the batttery through the rails sideways (never had to do it with the original battery)…
…but then the battery was still too wide to fit in the plastic tray. But if I pull out the foam guides from both side of the tray…
… and push down ever so gently: Success!
And after that the bike spun over quickly and started with the first stab at the magic button! That’s going to be nice to have for this weekend! And since it’s a dualsport bike… it’s also nice to not have to kickstart it when it occasionally stalls at stoplights. I need to turn up the idle just a little bit…
Haven’t used the battery for more than a couple minutes so far, but:
Pros:
— lighter than stock (but I don’t really care)
— will hopefully survive charge/discharge abuse better than my last victims
— started the bike 🙂
Cons:
— 50%-100% more than an OEM battery
— wide top made it hard to fit
— terminals you screw the wires to stick up from the battery (not recessed like OEM) meaning the wires stick up about 1cm higher than stock. It barely clears the bottom of my seat (E-Batt only provides wires out of their battery, so it may not have this problem)
— unproven durability: a dirtbike is basically a paintshaker on wheels: if it’s sensitive to long-term vibration there’s gonna be problems…
Oh, I forgot to weigh the TurnTech before installation, but the old battery weighed 1957 grams…
…which compared to the web site weight from TurnTech (1.9lbs) saves you just over a kilogram (1095 grams by my scale).
Hopefully this TurnTech will last a few years (comes with a 6-month warranty, which will get me through this season). If anything goes wrong I’ll be sure to post about it!
