Hello, John Talley here with partzilla.com.
I know plenty of ya'll have gone out to the garage, turned on the key to your bike, getting
ready to ride, got your helmet on, hit the starter and-- you hear that.
So, here's the question: does the battery need to be recharged or does it need to be
replaced?
Well, I don't know yet.
But what we're going to do is go ahead and pull the seat, go ahead and hook a tester
to it, go through a couple of testing techniques, and maybe try recharging it and see what happens.
So if you're ready, let me go grab a couple of tools and we'll get started.
Before we get started let's go through the tools you're going to need to get this little
project done.
Going to need a hammer, a decent 3/8 wrench, a 6mm allen for that, a #2 Phillips, flat
blade, a couple of pairs of needlenose pliers, and then on the specialty side you want to
have a voltometer and some type of smart battery charger and you're probably not going to have
this piece here.
this actually tests the health of the battery so I'd recommend running down to the dealership
with your battery and have them test it.
Certainly they can do that for you.
Once you've assembled all this, we can get started.
Alright first things first: to access the battery, this one happens to be under the
seat as it is on most other motorcycles.
Only a couple of bolts holding it on on either side.
Then we'll get the seat out of the way.
Alright, it looks like they've got a power commander hooked up.
That's just velcroed in.
Lay it out to the side.
Next, let's go ahead and lift out the ECM.
And, I'm one of those that likes to keep it plugged in.
Reason being, these little connections are pretty fragile, so I'd just rather pull it
up and out of the way than disconnecting it because basically you just have to get these
three Phillips screws out.
And then this upper plate can be removed and then that will expose the battery.
Well let's just do an initial test just to see what the battery voltage is.
I mean a typical healthy battery should be around 12.8, 12.9.
One that's in real trouble is going to be under 12 volts, so let's see where this one
ends up.
She's actually reading 12.48, but that is real close to fooling me.
So, what I'm going to do is leave this connected, and we're actually going to try to start it
and we're going to see what kind of voltage drop we get.
Alright, that dropped down to around two volts, so this battery is in serious trouble.
It may have an initial voltage that's where it's supposed to be, but I'm betting that
the tester's going to verify what we just saw.
There's no way it can start this machine dropping with that kind of loss.
So, let's get it taken out and tested.
Alright let's go ahead and get this battery out.
A little tip from me: you want to disconnect the negative first, and that'll be the last
thing that you connect.
Reason being is if this is disconnected and you short our this side, guess what?
It can't go anywhere.
But if this is already connected, well you're going to complete a circuit right there.
So, we're going to do the negative side first.
Then let's go ahead and get that positive side.
A little trick because this thing is so embedded in there.
If you have two pairs of needlenose pliers, grab it by the posts to get it out.
Alright, let's carry it over to the bench.
Alright, let's get it hooked up to our load tester and see what kind of shape this battery's
in.
Alright with a tester like this, this is actually battery-specific.
So I actually have to bring up YTX-20L.
Alright yeah I realized on the front of it it says GTX but I guess that's their particular
model number for a knock off, you know because this machine actually came with a Yuasa, and
that's the battery that I'm actually going to test for.
So that's what we've got in place.
Imagine that: it says to replace the battery.
Let's see what kind of health.
Alright, the health is zero percent, and its charge was you know, right at 80.
So yeah, you can charge this battery to death and it's not going to come back.
I did have the charger up here and I was going to go ahead and do that just to see what happens,
but I guarantee you it's just going to test the same.
When you have a zero health on it, it is done.
So, we need to serve us up a new battery, which I just happen to have already out on
the bench.
Like I said earlier, this is the OEM, this is what Honda uses.
This is a YTX-20LBS.
This is the battery you want to use.
We can sell you the battery, the trick is we cannot ship you the electrolyte.
So if you order one from us, it's not going to be ready to go.
you'll have to go and pick up a bag of electrolyte to get it filled.
But I'm going to go ahead and show you the process, get it charged, get it tested, and
we're going to get it back in the machine.
Pretty simple process.
Pull this upper cover.
You want to pull of this cap, but do not throw it away.
Because this piece right here is actually what seals it back up.
So, what we're going to do is plug that in and let it fill.
Don't be tempted to try to rock it back and forth or punch a little hole in the top to
get the acid to flow in quicker because it will overflow.
Because what it's doing right now is filling up all those voids inside of this glass matte
and that takes a little while.
So give this a couple of minutes, then we'll throw it on the charger.
Alright, all the electrolyte has been poured into our battery and just want to make sure
that you let it sit for about 20 minutes so it actually gets absorbed into the glass matte,
because that's actually what this is is an AGM type battery, which stands for absorbed
glass matte.
Alright, with that done now we need to charge it up.
Alright a couple of different options here.
AT our shop we've got this really nice smart charger made by Christie.
What you can use is just a small smart charger like this one from Battery Tender.
BikeMaster makes one, and I believe that Honda also makes one.
And we sell them all on the website.
So, if you just type in the word "Chargers," punch up a bunch of different ones will come
up.
If you really did want a commercial grade one, I know that Yuasa makes one as well.
but it's on the website as well if you want to go that route.
Alright, I'm not going to use the small charger because I have this one here and I'm in a
bit of a hurry.
So what we're going to do is go ahead and set it up for this particular battery.
Alright, yours might be different, but what we have to do is actually set what the size
battery it is, go ahead and connect up our cables, then set our time for the size battery.
We're going to go about an hour.
So with that set up, get around to 60 minutes.
Flip it on and away she goes.
So, in about an hour we'll get everything sealed back up and tested and then get it
back on the machine.
And I'll bet you it will start this time.
so, see you in an hour.
Well, she is finished charging.
So let's go ahead and disconnect.
Next step, go ahead and get this cap back on-- or on period, because I didn't mention
at the beginning but you definitely want to charge it with this off.
You don't want to install this piece until it's completely charged.
Alright.
At this point, this battery is sealed back up.
so you'll never have to take this off again because this is what they call a maintenance-free
battery.
Alright just for kicks let's hook it up and see where we ended up.
13.10 volts, so I'd say this one is pretty hot and ready to go.
And this is actually before delivery.
YTX-20, ready to install.
Alright, well that tells me everything I need to know, so let's go ahead and get her in
there.
Down she goes.
I'd already put those little threaded inserts in the posts before I laid it in there.
Alright, let's go ahead and get the positive on first.
Get is snugged down with a screwdriver and if you really want to make sure, just give
it a little bit more with a quarter-inch drive.
Because you don't want to put too much because you could actually rip that post off.
So just a little bit more, maybe a quarter of a turn will secure it.
Now, we can go ahead and do the negative side.
And on this particular one we've got this aftermarket power commander.
so don't forget to put the ground back on it if you have that or any other accessories
on your machine.
Same thing, tighten it down.
Then just about an eighth or a quarter turn just to make sure it's tight.
And we can get in this upper cover which actually holds it in place.
And if you remember there's just three Phillips head screws that hold it down.
Now swing our ECU back in.
Now, all that's left is to get the seat on.
And it's just those two 6mm Allens, one on either side.
Alright guys, let's flip it on and see what it does.
Well, as we could have predicted, she fired right up and had some pretty good authority
behind it.
Had no trouble spinning this one over.
Well listen, if your battery is in good shape and it's still not starting up, why don't
you follow me over to another video that we did that kind of addresses what I call a no-start
condition and maybe we can help you out with that.
Well listen, if you need any of the parts or the tools that we used, maybe one of those
chargers, why don't you come see us at partzilla.com and we can get you taken care of.
If you have any questions or comments, just leave them in the section below and I'll do
my best to answer them.
Until next time, we just want to say thanks for watching.