To make a long story short, my bike has a crap battery. I've kept the battery on a tender, I've gone for long rides rolling high RPMs to try to charge the battery, and it still has problems maintaining a charge. After a great amount of frustration, I decided to finally replace the battery. I took a chance with the new Ballistic Performance EVO2 8-cell battery. Take a look:
Ballistic Performance
It came in the mail today:
So, I went ahead and removed the old battery, but decided I wanted to get some good footage of the "before" so I can appreciate the "after". In both videos, the bike is trying to start with a cold engine. Here you go:
So, as I expected, no start on a pitiful battery. Here's a quick size/weight comparison of the batteries:
The EVO2 weighs in at about 1lb 10oz. The BikeMaster weighs about 10 pounds (5 pounds dry. I don't have a scale, so 10 pounds is an approximation).
Now, for the replacement:
The new battery is much smaller, so the stock terminal leads won't quite reach. This is about how far they will reach:
No fun. I'm rather impatient, so I decided to do a quick work-around until I have the chance to build some sort of extension for one of the power leads:
Power!
It this point, the battery is off the bike and sitting on my kitchen table. I'm going to buy a small piece of cable to extend the NEG end of the lead from the bike. Finally, I'm going to use some of the foam packing material that the battery came with to secure it in the roomy compartment left by the old battery.
Bottom line; I highly recommend this battery. It is expensive, but seeing my bike start that quickly with a cold engine is enough to convince me at this point. It will be a welcome change from what has been essentially a frequently-stalling bump-start-and-kick-start-only bike.
If I have any issues with the battery in the foreseeable future, I'll post the details here.
Ballistic Performance
It came in the mail today:
So, I went ahead and removed the old battery, but decided I wanted to get some good footage of the "before" so I can appreciate the "after". In both videos, the bike is trying to start with a cold engine. Here you go:
So, as I expected, no start on a pitiful battery. Here's a quick size/weight comparison of the batteries:
The EVO2 weighs in at about 1lb 10oz. The BikeMaster weighs about 10 pounds (5 pounds dry. I don't have a scale, so 10 pounds is an approximation).
Now, for the replacement:
The new battery is much smaller, so the stock terminal leads won't quite reach. This is about how far they will reach:
No fun. I'm rather impatient, so I decided to do a quick work-around until I have the chance to build some sort of extension for one of the power leads:
Power!
It this point, the battery is off the bike and sitting on my kitchen table. I'm going to buy a small piece of cable to extend the NEG end of the lead from the bike. Finally, I'm going to use some of the foam packing material that the battery came with to secure it in the roomy compartment left by the old battery.
Bottom line; I highly recommend this battery. It is expensive, but seeing my bike start that quickly with a cold engine is enough to convince me at this point. It will be a welcome change from what has been essentially a frequently-stalling bump-start-and-kick-start-only bike.
If I have any issues with the battery in the foreseeable future, I'll post the details here.
