3.5 years and my battery seems to be giving up the ghost, you only get 2 good chances to start after that it's back on the charger

Gordon

mines getting on for 4 1/2 now and not run for last 14 months but appears to still be good yet.

Why not tell us what you've got?

good idea, so what im planning to do is get the old batt, charge, it with a normal charger hope it starts then measure the voltage across the batt terminals is that right ?

MDS
 

I just ordered a battery from MDS - Varta £48.50 inc postage and saved £30 on other prices quoted

As Rockhopper says you want about 14.5V, trouble is with the 3-phase alternator and rectifier you can loose one phase and still get the volts but not the current capability. so need to check the running volts with the lights on
A 6 cell battery which should be 2.2V per cell when fully charged should read 13.2 volts with no load applied, as soon as the ignition is turned on it will drop slightly, the biggest load is the starter motor so when cranking that the volts are really going to try and drop off and if pulled down to far not only do you get slow cranking of the engine but also week sparks, poor pulsing of the injectors etc and the bike doesn't want to start
Some garages can stll test a batteries condition with a load cell may be worth asking around your local ones

sorry, most forums ask for and display bike details forgot had never put mine in,
2003 ST4S, if you have a gel cell don`t charge at too high an amperage or for
much longer than 2 hours at a time, best bet is to feel battery randomly once starts to get hot turn off and allow to cool otherwise you will distort the plates, due to being filled with gel they do not transfer heat as well as a lead acid cell

Update time and hopefully the wise ones can point me in the right direction again. Today I picked up a new battery from SJS in Salisbury, connected it up without the optimate leads connected.

She started first push of the button and I let it warm up a bit, then using the fast idle lever adjusted the revs to 2k.

Using my Fluke multimeter the voltage across the battery terminals was 14.05 volts, I checked it again when the revs were back at tick over and it still reads 14.05.

Is there additional checks I should be making ?

What does the above prove ?

Thanks

It proves that the charging system is (probably) okay!