Two Wheels Better

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Number of posts : 4695
Odyssey batteries are schmick in the way they quietly function! I obtained my first one about thirteen or fourteen years ago. It'd been used in a City of Portland (OR) police bike but had come up flat after a parade. The coppers leave their bikes sitting with lights ablaze regularly. I worked in a shop that serviced their bikes. We goodwilled a warranty for them and then it sat for yonks on the shelf until the service manager asked me to clear out the old warranty parts. I took it home. It'd been there eighteen months, according to him. I charged it with amps after being told by the rep from Hawker Energy, the manufacturer of Odyssey, that that's what brings them back to life. He said hit it with 50 amps for a few minutes to kick it back to life, then charge it with 10 amps until it's back to 13+ volts. He said they can be re-charged fifty times like this. I took his advice. He also suggested they don't like to be left on low-amp trickle chargers, said they don't allow the battery to come to full charge and full life expentancy. I admit to having used a Battery Tender once in a while on them, against his advice.
The battery lasted me another coupla years then I sold the R1100RS it was in to a mate. He ran it for two more years then sold the bike on, with the battery still functioning. I sold a heap of them with that story and never got one back with complaints. I use them in my own variety of bikes as well. Then, many years later, up in Tacoma, I grabbed one off the spent stack that was all puffed out and tired looking. I don't know its full story, but the service manager told me it had plumped up after a charge. I took it home, waited 'til it shrunk back to normal size then gave it a short 10 amp boost. It's sitting in my garage now, more than two years later, waiting to be used in one of my three bikes that take that model, the venerable PC680. I check it every so often with a load tester and voltmetre and it comes up aces. In 2002 they regularly sold at dealerships for $89.95. If you can glom onto one for just over a hunnerd dollars now, you'll be making a helluva savings.
The PC680 is the physically smaller of the two size choices but fits in the indented battery tray of all Bricks with no mods required, and will certainly be far superior to the large old school lead/acid version.
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1970 R60/5, '77 R75/7-R100, '85 K100, '87 K75C, '87 K100RS, '93 K11-K12 Big Block, '93 K1100RS, '95 R100-Mystic, '96 K1100RS, '98 K1200RS, '00 K1200RS, '02 K1200RS, '03 K1200GT, '04 R1150R, '04 R1150RT, '05 K1200S, '06 K1200R, '07 K1200R, '09 K1300GT, 2013 R1200RT-P & 2022 S1000XR
"We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable."
~John Updike.