Hot battery

G'day and merry christmas and all that jazz

I went to start the old bandit today.... nope. bzzt.... that is the sound it made. 

Flat battery...... I think.....

I haven't turned it on in a whole 9 days since I got back from my road trip (I promise I'll post a trip report... soon....). That trip saw me do 4500km over 20 days. The final day was a ten hour trip over 750-800km, so I'm really surprised that it went pfft.

So, I put it on charger for a while. After a couple of hours, I started the bike fine, in problems.

Decided to go out for a while (on my other bike), so put bandit back on charger to fill the battery completely. I left the battery on the bike.

I have done this before on both bikes, with no problems.

I came home after being out for probably less than two hours. My garage smelt of rotten eggs and the battery was hot.

So I have disconnected the charger, and taken the battery off the bike to cool down.

I am using a Repco 4000mA 3 stage charger, which is only a couple of months old. No problems before. 

I have had the bike for 18 months, and I've done 20,000km on it in that time. I am using the same battery that came with the bike, so no idea how old it is.

I should also note that the bike started fine every day, except a couple of times it kinda went clunk and reset the clock twice, indicating some possible starting issue. Battery connections are all fine.

Any thoughts on why this has happened?

Is my battery toast? Or will it be "okay"?

Thanks

It's probably toast but worth putting a multi meter across the terminals as well.  Could do the same for the charger too just to be sure. You'll get one from Super Cheap tomorrow for $15 or so. 
I'm not sure what bike you're on but if it's an early 1250 the rec/reg should have been replaced under a recall. Batteries can just fail and rec/regs can fail as well.
time to do some testing in my opinion.

2wheelsagain wrote:It's probably toast but worth putting a multi meter across the terminals as well.  Could do the same for the charger too just to be sure. You'll get one from Super Cheap tomorrow for $15 or so. 
I'm not sure what bike you're on but if it's an early 1250 the rec/reg should have been replaced under a recall. Batteries can just fail and rec/regs can fail as well.
time to do some testing in my opinion.

Ta, yeah I've been meaning to get a multimeter...

06 1200

Also will add that the charger is connected to my other bike at the mo, no hot battery, no smell etc. All seems well.

The rotten egg gas smell is Hydrogen Sulfide (not Sulfur Di-oxide which some people think).  It should not be present and indicates that the battery is over-charging (quite badly).  Not sure why that would be the case but it could be either the battery or the charger.  As stated above, use a multi-meter to see if the battery is holding its charge and see what is happening when the charger is connected to it.  I'm suspecting the battery has failed but you don't want to bugger a new battery if it's the charger.

Should have also mentioned that Hydrogen Sulfide is quite deadly and you don't want to be in an enclosed space if it is being produced.

Ewok1958 wrote:The rotten egg gas smell is Hydrogen Sulfide (not Sulfur Di-oxide which some people think).  It should not be present and indicates that the battery is over-charging (quite badly).  Not sure why that would be the case but it could be either the battery or the charger.  As stated above, use a multi-meter to see if the battery is holding its charge and see what is happening when the charger is connected to it.  I'm suspecting the battery has failed but you don't want to bugger a new battery if it's the charger.

Should have also mentioned that Hydrogen Sulfide is quite deadly and you don't want to be in an enclosed space if it is being produced.

Cheers for that.

Yep, only happened with the bandit battery. Other one happily fully charged and now off the charger, didn't get hot all. 

Off the bike, I put the bandit battery back on the charger, and it got really hot again.... it's also a bit bulgy....

Yes, I'll check the charger tomorrow, but reckon it's a new battery for me.... those motorbatt ones are looking good....

Ewok1958 wrote:

Should have also mentioned that Hydrogen Sulfide is quite deadly and you don't want to be in an enclosed space if it is being produced.

Yeah, and nope....

stu wrote:

Ewok1958 wrote:The rotten egg gas smell is Hydrogen Sulfide (not Sulfur Di-oxide which some people think).  It should not be present and indicates that the battery is over-charging (quite badly).  Not sure why that would be the case but it could be either the battery or the charger.  As stated above, use a multi-meter to see if the battery is holding its charge and see what is happening when the charger is connected to it.  I'm suspecting the battery has failed but you don't want to bugger a new battery if it's the charger.

Should have also mentioned that Hydrogen Sulfide is quite deadly and you don't want to be in an enclosed space if it is being produced.

Cheers for that.

Yep, only happened with the bandit battery. Other one happily fully charged and now off the charger, didn't get hot all. 

Off the bike, I put the bandit battery back on the charger, and it got really hot again.... it's also a bit bulgy....

Yes, I'll check the charger tomorrow, but reckon it's a new battery for me.... those motorbatt ones are looking good....

Before you buy a new battery you need to check the charge current on the bandit if the charger is ok. I saw this on a Harley when I was in at my dealer  a few weeks ago. The Harley was overcharging the battery at 20+ volts! The battery was not only hot it had swollen to the extent they struggled to get it out of the bike.
In your case the damage may have been done on your 2 hour ride. Hope its all ok otherwise your up for a new reg + battery


Oh and the Harley's battery was only 2 months old. The owner had replaced it because the previous one died and now the bike had fried the new one. No warranty in this case.

The battery charger you have is too high powered for bike batteries. I use a ctek .8A which charges smaller batteries beautifully. Your charger is more suited to car batteries. I agree with all the contents regarding checking your charging circuit. It should be around 13.5v from memory

Its probably not a good idea to leave the battery connected to the bike with these bigger bulk chargers, not necessarily for the batterys sake but for the bike.  Although there should be nothing switched on when the keys are out, battery chargers do not put out clean DC voltage and the chargers spikes could do some damage if something was brought in circuit  - say you accidently turned the bike on when the charger was still connected.  The Bandit is pretty tough, but there are still some sensative electronics.

As others have said, you still need to find out why the battery was so flat, especially after the long runs of the previous days.  The battery was either on its way out or the Bandits charging circuit has failed and is not keeping the battery charged. If you get a new battery from a good shop, they should also check the charging and let you know its condition.  With a fully charged battery you want to see something like 14 to 15.5v across the battery terminals when running at 5000rpm and on Hi Beam, this voltage will change depending on revs.  

The Repco (and essentially all) three stage chargers have a Bulk, Absorbtion and Float cycle, the more expensive the charger the better the electronics for detecting when the battery needs to go into each stage as well as a smoother DC charge voltage.  So my guess is because the battery was very flat (i.e. it couldn't turn the bike over) the Bulk charge cycle of the Repco Charger was pushing out the max current, and this has resulted in overcharging battery, and unfortunately it doesn't sound too good for recovery, so a new battery.

This is mine.
These are under $100

Those are very good chargers.  

I've had very bad luck using real cheap ones for maintenance charging, and more bad luck using some big mother of a thing to charge small batteries like motorbike batteries.  The Ctek seems to have much better regulation. I've never heard of one damaging a battery, though the one pictured is most suitable for a maintenance charger.  They make a range of chargers including ones which will provide a fast charge to big batteries and I think one even has a "boost" function (like fitting jumper cables) for starts.  But you pay for what you get.  I've never heard of one damaging batteries.   

One cheap charger I once used as a maintenance charger, has claimed 3 car batteries.  Useless as - not powerful enough to charge in a reasonable length of time and doesn't seem to want to stop.  

Yeah, always provide isolation when charging a battery - electronics only take one good hit to become so much junk.

I have a CTEK and it is great. I also have the loom that connects permanently to the bike battery so that it can be plugged in at any time. It has 3 LED lights to indicate the battery charge condition. I would not recommend leaving the CTEK on any longer than 10 days though. I have a Motobatt in my bike (was fitted when I got it), but I don't rate it. We use them at work and in certain model bikes they don't cut it i.e. big cruisers/ Harleys, older bikes etc. I'll be replacing it with a Yuasa. Expensive but last allot better.

When you fit a new battery to a bike. Check the voltage at the battery with the bike running just of idle. It should ( as a general rule of thumb) be in the region of 14-14.5 v DC (check OEM specs). Any more and this can cause damage to the battery i.e. the budging. Also pays to check again after the bike has run for a bit. I have had them in the past where they will spike after about 10 minutes of running but were fine at start up.