Gorgeous morning for a small NJ group ride.
Was hoping to get 4-5 hours of backcountry goodness in, but what happened instead.. before we ever started the ride, my damn battery went belly up!!
Tried to bump-start it.. no go (this is where FZ1 does not shine.. it's probably pushing 530 pounds with my current setup).
metallicat was kind enough to let me borrow his bike so I could ride home (only 5 minutes away) and pick up battery tender lead extension so we could try to jump start my bike from his. We let it charge for 10 minutes... zero luck.
Next idea.. we ride 2-up to nearest Autozone (hoping they'll have a charger). QuietEagle follows us to the store. We get to Autozone and the guy doesn't have any cables that will hook onto my battery, not to mention he doesn't have a charger.. he just uses another battery for this purpose.
At this point I decide I might as well go home and do some research (figure out what battery I can get locally and if it IS in fact my battery that's faulty).
metallicat and I ride 2-up back to my place with QuietEagle in tow. metallicat rides back home (that was worth the trip from Brooklyn
) and QuietEagle and I take my car and go for some pizza (at least we had really nice lunch!).
At this point codeblue texts me to let me know that he's waiting for us at a point along our route.. D'OH! Sorry, man.
I get home and hook up the battery to my car to try to charge it up. 15 minutes in and it went from 12.2 to 12.5, which *should* be enough. Wife takes me to Wawa and I hook up the battery. Nothing!.. barely cranked over and dropped to 12. Now we go to a proper car parts store and they test my battery for me. Sure enough it's totally done.. under load voltage dropped to 5 and after that only bounced back up to 11.5. Unfortunately the car store does not sell bike batteries.
Off to Autozone again. I look at the batteries they have for bikes.. Everstart and Magna. NO application guide.. WTF? People working at the store have no clue, of course. So back home for some research. Found that Magna AGM EXT9 fits my bike.. call the store to confirm that they have it in stock.. they do! Back to the store AGAIN.. pick up the battery, back to Wawa parking lot. Drop battery in and bike fires up immediately! :cheer:
Checked the voltage .. 13.something at idle, so it's charging fine. Took it out for a 30 minute spin and measured voltage with bike off when I got home. 13 even, so stator must be fine.
I still feel bad that I had the guys ride out here and we didn't actually get to do any riding together
I suppose it could have been worse .. if my battery went at the farthest point from home it would have sucked exponentially more.
Was hoping to get 4-5 hours of backcountry goodness in, but what happened instead.. before we ever started the ride, my damn battery went belly up!!
Tried to bump-start it.. no go (this is where FZ1 does not shine.. it's probably pushing 530 pounds with my current setup).
metallicat was kind enough to let me borrow his bike so I could ride home (only 5 minutes away) and pick up battery tender lead extension so we could try to jump start my bike from his. We let it charge for 10 minutes... zero luck.
Next idea.. we ride 2-up to nearest Autozone (hoping they'll have a charger). QuietEagle follows us to the store. We get to Autozone and the guy doesn't have any cables that will hook onto my battery, not to mention he doesn't have a charger.. he just uses another battery for this purpose.
At this point I decide I might as well go home and do some research (figure out what battery I can get locally and if it IS in fact my battery that's faulty).
metallicat and I ride 2-up back to my place with QuietEagle in tow. metallicat rides back home (that was worth the trip from Brooklyn
) and QuietEagle and I take my car and go for some pizza (at least we had really nice lunch!).At this point codeblue texts me to let me know that he's waiting for us at a point along our route.. D'OH! Sorry, man.
I get home and hook up the battery to my car to try to charge it up. 15 minutes in and it went from 12.2 to 12.5, which *should* be enough. Wife takes me to Wawa and I hook up the battery. Nothing!.. barely cranked over and dropped to 12. Now we go to a proper car parts store and they test my battery for me. Sure enough it's totally done.. under load voltage dropped to 5 and after that only bounced back up to 11.5. Unfortunately the car store does not sell bike batteries.
Off to Autozone again. I look at the batteries they have for bikes.. Everstart and Magna. NO application guide.. WTF? People working at the store have no clue, of course. So back home for some research. Found that Magna AGM EXT9 fits my bike.. call the store to confirm that they have it in stock.. they do! Back to the store AGAIN.. pick up the battery, back to Wawa parking lot. Drop battery in and bike fires up immediately! :cheer:
Checked the voltage .. 13.something at idle, so it's charging fine. Took it out for a 30 minute spin and measured voltage with bike off when I got home. 13 even, so stator must be fine.
I still feel bad that I had the guys ride out here and we didn't actually get to do any riding together
I suppose it could have been worse .. if my battery went at the farthest point from home it would have sucked exponentially more.
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