I helped some girls to jump start their car this morning. With a smirk as of course this would never happen to me. Well, in the evening I headed to get my scoot from were I left it Saturday morning, only to discover that it takes me just under an hour to walk two miles and that my scooter wouldn't start. The starter would actually crank or at least it sounded like it tries to, but perhaps it couldn't run the spark or reach the compression. All the lights were dim, and the dashboard barely visible. You could literally see the lights go down in sync with starter cranking.
I had some problems with my battery and generator before as I changed the headlight sockets and headlights to higher wattage (there simply weren't such dim bulbs available; will post these pics later), and this was putting a strain on my battery. It always managed to start however. I disconnected the bulbs (now I can do this by reaching from behind the front wheel), but that didn't help.
Crank kick didn't work either, but then again it never did. I also happen to have my large kickstand taken off the bike as it scratched in the surface on turns, so I couldn't get the full range on the crank.
The battery is located right in front of the seat, under the "carpet" cover. My cover was a little loose when I was getting my Baron, so I had the dealer run a few screws through it to hold it down. The battery compartment itself is closed with Phillips #2 (the most common) screws, and the terminals are attached with Phillips head bolts. So all you'd need to get the battery out is a regular Phillips screwdriver. (Correction - the terminals are Phillips #3; you can still get it out with #2; see below)
Too bad I didn't happen to walk around with a screwdriver, and I didn't have one under the seat. Neither did I ever see what's below that cover. So I headed back for some tools.
Good news I've a got a charger that I won with all the raffle goodies at Rattle My Bones. The thing looked really puny, as it is sized more like a common household charger and nothing like huge boxes of car charging stations. Anyways I have it and today is the day for it to prove itself :-)
Getting the battery out was a piece of cake, except I had to use something to pry up the battery compartment cover. Of course the terminals didn't have any grease or whatever protection on them. Also the battery is smaller then the compartment and it looks like it continuously slides in that box, because of all the wear on the sides and the bottom. Good news it's easy to carry! Additionally, it has some seriously lame translation on the side, only the manual beats that. Some pictures when I'm through with this.
The charger turns out to be a serious little beast. You could tell it's made to be useful. The cord itself is 12 feet long. There are two interchangeable types of terminals, copper clamps and usual ring connector. Each is fused at the end of positive wire. Changeable terminals have special slip covers at the point they connect to the charger wire, apparently to prevent any shorts. The box only does 750mA = 0.75A which corresponds to overnight charging according to what it says on the battery (.7A for 5 to 10 hours or 3A for 1 hour). It also appears to be made with maintenance in mind. The instructions quite seriously describe what to do if you want to leave a battery plugged for more than a month. This is of course very useful for recreational vehicles, if only a little risky. The charger is made by Deltran and is called "Battery Tender Junior".
I can't locate my tester, so I am just plugging this thing in overnight. It says it's charging, but nothing is warming up even a little. Then again it's under one amp.
Day 2
In just under four hours, the charger was done charging the battery, changed its little light to flashing green and sent me a text message. So I took the battery to the scoot Sunday morning, and put it in and started the scoot and it wouldn't start just like the previous night. Turns out the killer switch was flipped. I must have not noticed it in the dark. I only had to use it twice so far, so it didn't even occur to me to check the thing. When the switch is flipped, the scoot behaves similarly to when the kick stand is out: the power is on but really weak, the starter cranks but the engine wouldn't start. Well, I'll keep it in mind, and yes, people do mess with parked scooters. So charging the battery probably wasn't needed after all. Heck, at least I got to take a look at it.
It started well and drove great. I only connected back one of the headlights. You'll often see this especially on motorcycles. The idea is not to tax the generator too much. The headlights I have now take twice as much power as the old ones (35W vs old 18W) , so having one on is just right. It certainly appears to be brighter now then before with two bulbs on - they just never got enough current to heat up to full brightness.
Pictures
I took it to place the battery properly, and finished this past weekend. Below are some images.
Battery compartment location:
Battery lid view. This is already when I am putting it back in, hence all the grease. There are two screw holes and two notches on the other side of the lid. The lid may be stuck a little. So there are two holes next to the screws. You can use a pick or a small screwdriver in these slits to lift the lid up. Didn't see them in the dark though :)
Here's a close-up on the pickup slit:
Battery close up:
The terminals are made of lead. There is a small square nut inside the terminal cage, and it actually slides out. So watch out for it when the terminal is undone. The screws turned out to be Phillips #3, which is one size larger the usual Phillips #2. You can still do it with #2 but just won't get them as tight. The screws are also quite soft as this is all made of lead.
Battery warnings aka "Method and Attention". Do not read this if you are still in coma after the manual. (Click for high resolution.)
That brick was certainly an overkill.
The charger
My positive terminal wasn't crimped right. So I crimped it a little extra to hold the wire. Since it isn't properly holding on the insulation, I've put plenty of electrical tape on it, just to give it some rigidity.
Putting it back in. To prevent the battery from rattling in the compartment, I've padded it with a piece of foam on the side. This is window lining foam for air conditioners, so it does not retain too much moisture.
The wire arrangement. There are two positive terminal wires. The electrical tape on the battery is simply to keep the wires in place.
There are various fancy things one can put on battery terminals to prevent them from corroding. The preferred one is still ol-good petroleum jelly. It wins for it's valuable combination of being extremely sticky, extremely water-repellent and extremely available. So piled plenty of it on each terminal after connecting all the wires etc.
There's extra grease on the rims. I didn't want any water to seep into the compartment from the top, so I've put some silicon grease around the edge. This is K&N silicon grease for sealing air filter compartments. Yes, they do all sorts of things. Even though there is no rubber gasket, I still think this is better then nothing. Compartment isn't sealed, there's a large hole on the side where the wires enter.
That's it, folks.
I had some problems with my battery and generator before as I changed the headlight sockets and headlights to higher wattage (there simply weren't such dim bulbs available; will post these pics later), and this was putting a strain on my battery. It always managed to start however. I disconnected the bulbs (now I can do this by reaching from behind the front wheel), but that didn't help.
Crank kick didn't work either, but then again it never did. I also happen to have my large kickstand taken off the bike as it scratched in the surface on turns, so I couldn't get the full range on the crank.
The battery is located right in front of the seat, under the "carpet" cover. My cover was a little loose when I was getting my Baron, so I had the dealer run a few screws through it to hold it down. The battery compartment itself is closed with Phillips #2 (the most common) screws, and the terminals are attached with Phillips head bolts. So all you'd need to get the battery out is a regular Phillips screwdriver. (Correction - the terminals are Phillips #3; you can still get it out with #2; see below)
Too bad I didn't happen to walk around with a screwdriver, and I didn't have one under the seat. Neither did I ever see what's below that cover. So I headed back for some tools.
Good news I've a got a charger that I won with all the raffle goodies at Rattle My Bones. The thing looked really puny, as it is sized more like a common household charger and nothing like huge boxes of car charging stations. Anyways I have it and today is the day for it to prove itself :-)
Getting the battery out was a piece of cake, except I had to use something to pry up the battery compartment cover. Of course the terminals didn't have any grease or whatever protection on them. Also the battery is smaller then the compartment and it looks like it continuously slides in that box, because of all the wear on the sides and the bottom. Good news it's easy to carry! Additionally, it has some seriously lame translation on the side, only the manual beats that. Some pictures when I'm through with this.
The charger turns out to be a serious little beast. You could tell it's made to be useful. The cord itself is 12 feet long. There are two interchangeable types of terminals, copper clamps and usual ring connector. Each is fused at the end of positive wire. Changeable terminals have special slip covers at the point they connect to the charger wire, apparently to prevent any shorts. The box only does 750mA = 0.75A which corresponds to overnight charging according to what it says on the battery (.7A for 5 to 10 hours or 3A for 1 hour). It also appears to be made with maintenance in mind. The instructions quite seriously describe what to do if you want to leave a battery plugged for more than a month. This is of course very useful for recreational vehicles, if only a little risky. The charger is made by Deltran and is called "Battery Tender Junior".
I can't locate my tester, so I am just plugging this thing in overnight. It says it's charging, but nothing is warming up even a little. Then again it's under one amp.
Day 2
In just under four hours, the charger was done charging the battery, changed its little light to flashing green and sent me a text message. So I took the battery to the scoot Sunday morning, and put it in and started the scoot and it wouldn't start just like the previous night. Turns out the killer switch was flipped. I must have not noticed it in the dark. I only had to use it twice so far, so it didn't even occur to me to check the thing. When the switch is flipped, the scoot behaves similarly to when the kick stand is out: the power is on but really weak, the starter cranks but the engine wouldn't start. Well, I'll keep it in mind, and yes, people do mess with parked scooters. So charging the battery probably wasn't needed after all. Heck, at least I got to take a look at it.
It started well and drove great. I only connected back one of the headlights. You'll often see this especially on motorcycles. The idea is not to tax the generator too much. The headlights I have now take twice as much power as the old ones (35W vs old 18W) , so having one on is just right. It certainly appears to be brighter now then before with two bulbs on - they just never got enough current to heat up to full brightness.
Pictures
I took it to place the battery properly, and finished this past weekend. Below are some images.
Battery compartment location:
Battery lid view. This is already when I am putting it back in, hence all the grease. There are two screw holes and two notches on the other side of the lid. The lid may be stuck a little. So there are two holes next to the screws. You can use a pick or a small screwdriver in these slits to lift the lid up. Didn't see them in the dark though :)
Here's a close-up on the pickup slit:
Battery close up:
The terminals are made of lead. There is a small square nut inside the terminal cage, and it actually slides out. So watch out for it when the terminal is undone. The screws turned out to be Phillips #3, which is one size larger the usual Phillips #2. You can still do it with #2 but just won't get them as tight. The screws are also quite soft as this is all made of lead.
Battery warnings aka "Method and Attention". Do not read this if you are still in coma after the manual. (Click for high resolution.)
That brick was certainly an overkill.
The charger
My positive terminal wasn't crimped right. So I crimped it a little extra to hold the wire. Since it isn't properly holding on the insulation, I've put plenty of electrical tape on it, just to give it some rigidity.
Putting it back in. To prevent the battery from rattling in the compartment, I've padded it with a piece of foam on the side. This is window lining foam for air conditioners, so it does not retain too much moisture.
The wire arrangement. There are two positive terminal wires. The electrical tape on the battery is simply to keep the wires in place.
There are various fancy things one can put on battery terminals to prevent them from corroding. The preferred one is still ol-good petroleum jelly. It wins for it's valuable combination of being extremely sticky, extremely water-repellent and extremely available. So piled plenty of it on each terminal after connecting all the wires etc.
There's extra grease on the rims. I didn't want any water to seep into the compartment from the top, so I've put some silicon grease around the edge. This is K&N silicon grease for sealing air filter compartments. Yes, they do all sorts of things. Even though there is no rubber gasket, I still think this is better then nothing. Compartment isn't sealed, there's a large hole on the side where the wires enter.
That's it, folks.
3 comments:
You write very well.
Thanks!
Yarko
There are certain periods though when your scooter will not be in used and that period of disuse can drain your battery and you will be disappointed the next time you take it out for a ride. You can avoid all that trouble if you just had a battery tender at hand.
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