Storing Your Bike This Winter? Charge now or pay later. That’s the simple message from OptiMate, the battery-saving experts.
Left unattended, 12V motorcycle batteries can take a battering during the winter months: lower temperatures slow the chemical reaction inside, reducing capacity; and charge is quickly lost to leakage between the terminals, alarms and immobilisers, trackers, clocks and on-board computers.
Come springtime the battery will – at best – be deeply discharged, delaying the first ride of the new season; or be damaged beyond repair, leaving the owner facing a hefty bill for a replacement.
Connecting a motorcycle to an intelligent battery charger is proven to keep the battery in peak condition, so it can deliver a full charge when you press the starter button for the first time in weeks or even months.
Before choosing your smart charger, it’s essential to identify the type of battery fitted to your motorcycle, and its age. Lead-acid batteries require different charging rates to lithium, older batteries need more sophisticated chargers than new ones, and some CAN-Bus systems have to be ‘unlocked’ for charging to commence.
Recommended by virtually every major motorcycle manufacturer, OptiMate chargers and optimisers maintain, test, diagnose and can even repair a bike’s battery, all completely automatically.
- OptiMate1 Duo (RRP £39.99 inc VAT) is ideal for charging and maintaining batteries under four years-old, automatically recognising whether they are lead acid or Lithium Ion.
- OptiMate3 Global (£59.99 inc VAT) diagnoses, charges, tests and maintains all types of 12V lead-acid batteries and can recover sulphated batteries with almost zero charge remaining. Ideal for older motorcycles/batteries.
- OptiMate 4 Dual (£72.99 inc VAT) that includes two charging programmes; one is for direct charging of a battery via the terminals or an adaptor cable; the other allows safe and unsupervised charging through a motorcycle’s CAN-bus controlled 12V socket.
- OptiMate Lithium 0.8A (£62.99 inc VAT) is specifically designed to safely monitor and maintain lithium batteries, and will reset the internal BMS (Battery Management System) so that charging can begin.
For owners of more than one bike, OptiMate also offers Multibank chargers, suitable for both AGM and Li-Ion batteries, which will assess, charge and maintain up to four batteries at once; as well as a range of Battery Monitors, which indicate when a battery requires charging, so you can swop chargers between bikes.
See the complete OptiMate range of chargers and monitors at www.optimate1.com.
