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How to Check a Motorcycle Battery

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Part of the video series: Motorcycle Repair

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Summary: Make sure a motorcycle's battery is fully functional. Learn tips on how to care for and charge a battery in this free motorcycle maintenance video.

Views: 5,424 | Tags: repair, diy, fix, maintenance, bike, motorcycle, ride, harley, davidson, motorcycles

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About the Expert
Contact: vcycles.com

Jerry Fishel Jerry Fishel trained at Motorcycle Mechanics Institute in Phoenix AZ & Orlando, FL. He is also a Harley-Davidson factory certified master mechanic. Jerry work... read more

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Video Transcript

How to Check a Motorcycle Battery

Hello! This is Jerry Fishel with Vicious Cycles in Santa Clara, Utah for Expert Village. What we want to go into this segment about is out battery; how to check your battery, how to make sure it is charging correctly; how to check your charging system in general. We already cleaned the battery. Now we want to make sure that we have our volts. Set the volts, check our battery and make sure we have a good standing charge which we do have a good standing charge; anything over 12 is a good standing charge. We want to check the battery also by turning the bike on. Turn on the bike and watch where your voltage drops. You will have a slight voltage drop when you power up. You may drop down as low as 10 to 11 volts which is fine. When you engage the starter, you want to make sure that your bike is in neutral, very important. Once you attempt to start the bike, you want to watch your meter and make sure that it does not drop below 9.6 volts. If while starting the bike putting a load to the battery and it drops below 9.6 volts, the battery is junk, dead. There is a dead cell or it is sulphated. It is just time to get a new battery. Once your bike is started, you want to watch your volt meter and make sure it jumps up at least to 13 ½ to 14 ½ volts to show that it is charging. If it is not charging, shown below 13 ½ volts, then the problem may not be the battery alone, it may be your regulator or your stator in your charging system. When we started the bike, the voltage stayed above 9.6. As we increased RPM’s, the voltage increased. You want to see a voltage increase of RPM’s. You want to go up to like I said around 14.5. If you are not showing increase of voltage with increase of RPM’s, then there is a problem with the regulator, alternator charging system.

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