Dead battery #2...

[tobes]

Heading out to lunch today from work I go to the parking garage, hop on the bike, turn the key, hit the iginition...CLICK! Out go the lights. Dead battery. The last one was in August at about 2k miles, now this one at almost 16k miles. Annoying. But, I must say the tow and repair was very good. 30 mins for the tow to arrive and 20 mins for the local dealer, who happened to be 2 miles away, to fix it. Out the door it cost me $2.00 for wire ends. The tech didn't like my wiring job for the GPS, called it tacky and fixed it. Whatever. This battery stuff is getting old. C'mon BMW fix this issue!! And yes, I still love this bike

[celticus]

Could it have indeed been your wiring job? I know I wired up a slow electron leak last year when I installed dual horns. I had to get a jump from an old Airhead at a rally.
Mark

[tobes]

Nah, I thought of that. The GPS is always off the bike when I'm not on it. The power end dangles in the air. There's nothing to draw. The tech was referring to the aesthetics of my workmanship This was the classic signs of defect battery, similar to what happened last year: press start button, 'CLICK', turn off ignition, turn on ignition, the display does a little dance and goes out again.

[Bill Stevenson]

Yea, I am on my third battery too, and no GPS or anything else that could be blamed. These batteries suck.

Bill

[deilenberger]

I'm still on my original - 2 years+ and 25k miles. Go figure..

FWIW - while there are different names on the outside - most batteries of the same size/type are made by one manufacturer. In the case of our Exide (owned by Yausa) - they are made by Yausa, who was a subject of a Motorcycle Consumer News article a few years back on frequent failures identical to ours. The fault, which supposedly was fixed - was of a connector within the battery breaking. Sounds as if the fix wasn't so great.

FWIW-II - and completely OT - does anyone else find the crappy response times and downtime on this forum terrifically frustrating? For one that many of us paid to help improve the performance of - and one that is really lightly used (other forums frequently have thousands of visitors at one time..) - the performance plainly sucks. First time it failed to open. Next time when it did open it had forgotten my login/password, then in that same session, when I went to post this - it again had forgotten login/PW.

And since it fails so many times when I tell it to post something - I always now copy the message before I press the Submit button.

If there was another forum with the same group of users we've grown on this one - I'd be there in a snap. Any ideas?

[deilenberger]

Sorry for the duplicate posting - the crappy forum timed out on me again.. (and it's not me.. it's the damn forum.)

[combustor777]

Still on my original battery in my 1150R, 7+ years old. Sounds like the fancy new electrical system was a step backwards?

[deilenberger]

Sounds like the fancy new electrical system was a step backwards?

No, although if it makes you feel better - feel free to believe that. The battery is the problem - not the electical system (which is WORLDS better than the R11 electrical nightmare..)

[websterize]

My battery was dead on delivery, but that was probably because it had been sitting on the floor for six months. Bob's replaced it, and so far so good. I plug in the battery charger if I don't ride it after a few days.

FWIW-II - and completely OT - does anyone else find the crappy response times and downtime on this forum terrifically frustrating? For one that many of us paid to help improve the performance of - and one that is really lightly used (other forums frequently have thousands of visitors at one time..) - the performance plainly sucks. First time it failed to open. Next time when it did open it had forgotten my login/password, then in that same session, when I went to post this - it again had forgotten login/PW.

And since it fails so many times when I tell it to post something - I always now copy the message before I press the Submit button.

If there was another forum with the same group of users we've grown on this one - I'd be there in a snap. Any ideas?

Don, you might consider e-mailing [email protected], the admin, about the site issues. I requested advice about some posting problems I was having (timeouts, "My SQL" errors) and he replied quickly. This morning I couldn't log in for about an hour. I copy my replies before submitting, too.

[Bill Stevenson]

I agree with Don, it is the batteries, not the charging system that is at fault here. Unfortunately, the sure fire fix of going back to a wet cell, lead acid battery is not appropriate because of the lower voltage in our charging system. I have heard that the Odyssey batteries are excellent, but that they don't make one to the standard dimension required for our bikes. Modification is possible I am told. Has anyone make the change? If so, what is involved?

Bill

[r1200rforme]

Wuunderlich's new catalog lists on page 342, an Odyssey battery for the R1200R.

[r1200rforme]

That would be Wunderlich, sorry.

[tobes]

Think I'll post this issue over on the Xplor website. That seems to be BMW's corporate forum. Maybe they'll notice.

[ka5ysy]

Go over to interstate Batteries and buy a motorcycle battery from them. Much better and way cheaper than BMW prices.

[deilenberger]

Go over to interstate Batteries and buy a motorcycle battery from them. Much better and way cheaper than BMW prices.

Actually - the parts guy at our friendly local dealership - about 2 weeks ago, said the price for the BMW battery had dropped in half - it was now around $80 retail. I don't think you'll find much that's cheaper than that. Better? Hard to say since Interstate doesn't build all their own batteries (someplace there was a website that you could look up a battery by "manufacturer" "model" and find out who made it. That's where I found Yuasa was the manufacturer of most of the batteries sized for BMWs, no matter what name was on them..)