Novice, need general battery advice, replacing every year!!

[stephen2us]

First, I don't ride often, and didn't ride this year with some issues. Took care of it just now, and I guess from my battery not being on a tinder for most of the year, it's dead now, and by dead, I mean, it won't recharge. it'll charge it just for an hour, and show it's good, but but it's dead.... So, another battery down the toilet. Is this normal? Batteries just poop themselves if not a tinder for some time? What's the normal time frame, where you don't ride often, but don't need to have it on a battery tinder? This will be like my third of fourth battery in 6-7 years... just need some general knowledge...
Thanks all...

 

[spectra]

You may have a drain somewhere on it and thats why it killed it. Normal battery should not be totally killed in a year. Yes a battery tender is good to have. I run one on my bijes and have no issues even when they sat for almost 2 years.....

A simple battery tender can be found for about 25 bucks and is worth it....otherwise keep a charger handy and every so often put it on the bike and trickle charge it.

 

[amc49]

No bike battery almost on earth will make a year with no charging. Much bigger car ones; many of them won't either, they at least sustain damage that shortens the overall life. Modern cars with electronics that try to cut off to save power still commonly won't make 3-4 months now, keeping the memory alive to be able to run instantly without updating uses power gradually and the only way to escape much of it is to disconnect a battery cable, which can extend the time by 2X-3X. But then you have to go through possible crap running at cable reconnection until the running memory updates to set the idle running parameters and other things.

NORMAL. You have to at least trickle charge them on the fly or charge them fully every 2-3 months. Go more than 6 and you are begging for a fail. Batteries drop sediment to the bottom of the cells as they sit uncharged, once the sediment touches two cells to short them out the battery is pretty much dead. It will seem to charge up but be dead again in say an hour or two. Or even minutes. Car batteries have much deeper unused space under the cells to hold more sediment than bike batteries, which may only be 1/8" thick there and why they can die so fast.

I used to sell lots of batteries and leaving them uncharged more than 6 months is death to at least 50% of them. It was the first question I asked when people came in with warranty battery less than two years old and the answer commonly it was left in car with zero charging. DEATH.

I for one have too many cars and remove a cable, it lets them go about twice as long. You still MUST charge at least once every 4-6 months. When the key is off there are diodes that are supposed to stop battery charge from running back up the alt charging cable but they all slowly leak and where the power goes. Why yanking cable helps.

Been that way for 75 years at least.