I really don't think I tryed turning it over more then twice and one time I got no repose before I realized the Battery tender wasn't charging it Or so I thought anyway. The battery is very new, just been sitting for awhile. I'll find out tomorrow I suppose.

 

Lots of good advice on the tender/charger subject.

What I would be concerned about is why was it dead after only 17 days.

My sporty sat for 3 months without being started (and the battery in it was a couple of years old), no charger, no tender. When I went to start it after 3 months, it was a tad sluggish, but it started right up.

 

you prob figured this out already, but my three cents:

if i had a dead battery, i would use a regular charger to bring it back to life... then i would hook up the tender to take it to full charge and maintain the full charge. once its there i would take it for a ride, then hook up the tender when finished.

a good battery would respond to the above. one with a bad cell will not.

 

One thought I had was, when I bought the battery in September I asked the stealership if I needed to charge it. I was told no and I've read on a couple of posts about others charging a new battery. Not sure if I should have or not when I got it. I also was under the impression that these sportster batteries were not as hardy as other larger batteries. Iwas warned about leaving the ignition in park for too long. I did use the normal charger and am now topping off with the tender.

Thanks for the information.

 

When I took my bike home the first thing I did was put it on the tender. Like most new batteries it took a good 24hrs for the tender to green up, as well as it took quit a few charge ups to get the battery to green up sooner than an hour or so. With all that said, I can deduce that all batteries brought home from a dealership are seriously undercharge....more dealership miss-information.

 

A battery tender, in essence, is a battery charger with low output (Ah) and some fancy electronics which, once the battery is at full capacity, keeps it at that capacity.

In other words you can use a battery tender to charge a drained battery as long as you have enough time and the battery's inherent rate of discharge does not exceed the tender's output. The discharge rate depends on things such as the size and age of the battery.

As explained earlier, my 750 mA Noco Genius tender managed to charge the old battery in my Dodge Ram. The battery was at a stage where the dash lights still came on but it could no longer crank the engine. It took the tender 7 to 10 days to charge the battery but it did it.

Obviously, neither a tender nor a proper charger can fix a stuffed battery. I purchased a brand new Harley battery from my dealer last May and one morning in October I couldn't start the bike (I use it every day). So I took the battery back to the dealer and when they tested it they found that one or more of the cells had died. Don't ask me how or why.

But they were good and replaced it free of charge for a brand new one and that seems to be behaving. I guess we'll see if it lasts...

 

I agree with this. Glad you got it started but under no circumstance unless you forgot to turn off the ignition when you hit the kill switch should it be dead in 17 days.

 

Also, I'm pretty sure that I read that it takes something like a 20 mile ride for the charging system on our bikes to charge the battery back from that one start up. I could be wrong though since I read that on this internet site from another forum member with way more electrical experience than I.

 

+1 - But to be more specific, it's more like 20 minutes at cruise speed. Idling and riding in stop and go traffic can actually discharge the battery as the RPM's aren't kept high enough for the charging system to output enough amps to overcome the constant power draw of the lights and (ICM/ECM) electronics.

This is why it's a good idea to keep the battery on a tender if you're just running around town or bar hopping.


.

 

I don't know it this applies to the OP, but we used to see a lot of dead battery reports from people with the factory alarm system installed. Sitting for 2 weeks with the alarm armed and no battery tender frequently resulted in a dead battery.

I don't know if the alarm systems have been changed or people are becoming better educated about the need for a tender, but I haven't seen as may reports on the issue lately.

.