Effects of weak battery?

[MBanks]

Hello all,

Recently i had been noticing what seem to be lack of power and slower acceleration. I was perplexed until i also noticed my start up was weak and realized i should check my battery. The wet cell was halfway empty! I have since refilled with distilled water and my weak start was gone . Can a weak battery cause a decrease in running power? I think i've solved my problem (check levels, duh!), but am not sure if symptoms of another problem.

-MBanks

sorry about bad english, trolling forum during class, can't look at my PC enough for proper typing.

[Dogma]

You should have enough power to run the bike well and charge the battery at the same time. With half of your electrolyte boiled out, you really should do the Stator Paper tests to make sure your charging system is healthy. All you need is a voltmeter if it's healthy.

[tom203]

You should have enough power to run the bike well and charge the battery at the same time. With half of your electrolyte boiled out, you really should do the Stator Paper tests to make sure your charging system is healthy. All you need is a voltmeter if it's healthy.

Yes, this is what you need to do, cuz maybe your electrolyte boiled off due to overcharging.But I doubt this had anything to do with lack of power- once the bike is running, the charging system will try to maintain 12 to 14 volts no matter what. If battery was bad, the r/r would probably keep pumping juice to it as it maintains ignition power. Do those tests.

[chuckycheese]

Battery

If it runs good now (after adding water), I wouldn't do anything except ride it and check your battery level in a week or two. Since you don't know when water was last added, it may have simply evaporated. Ride it, have fun...and check it again soon. If the fluid level is low, get started on checking out the charging system. (Nothing that may be wrong is going to get appreciably worse or ever get better between now and then.)

Many motorcycles will run poorly with a bad or depleted battery. Charging a dead battery by riding it is less than ideal; a charger is a better idea.

[bwringer]

Why not check the charging system right now?

A decent digital meter is $3 at Harbor Freight. There is absolutely no reason not to own and use one now -- you could head off much larger troubles by taking two minutes to test your bike and understand exactly what your charging system is doing.

You can indeed do a lot of damage to your bike by riding it without testing to see why it boiled out all the battery acid. For example, if it's overcharging, spilled acid can be quite detrimental to your frame and continued survival, not to mention the huge strain you're placing on your stator and even the risk of fire from overheated wiring.

[chuckycheese]

Give it a chance....

He didn't say that it boiled out because he has no reason to think that it did (and there's a very good chance it didn't since he doesn't know when it was last checked and we're at the 'tail end' of a long, hot summer)....... but checking it wouldn't hurt, I agree, if that's what he'd like to do.

[MBanks]

Sorry for no response, but i know my system is good because i've checked it (it was bad last year btw, and had to replace the reg/rectifier. Works great now). I failed to keep an eye on it that whole time since then. Additionally, it has been a long hot summer, and i had a little accident at low speed that may have caused a lot of it to pour out. It's on my trickle charger now, I'll see if that solves my problems, which now mostly consists of hard starts on cold days.