Life expectancy of an OE battery on an twin cam

[thrang]

My R1200 has got very sluggish to turn over, over the last week or two and today refused to start after a lunch stop. No problem called AA bloke and he jumped the bike and the 12 ran like a dream the 100 odd miles home. Obviously the battery is shagged (its warranted for two years) and I've ordered a replacement, but for a the OE battery to pack up at less than 3 years old does seem a little cheap.

[skippyc]

I have a mate with an R1200 and his battery goes flat in 3 weeks. It seems to be discharging all the time. As a consequence it didn't last long.

[Barry]

If the battery has been kept fully charged then less than 3 years is not near enough especially in our cool climate. Quality batteries should last 5 - 10 years in the UK.

My current bike battery is only 2 years old but my original car battery is now 7 with little real sign of deterioration.   I've even had 12 years out of standard wet cells on both a car and a bike but that was pushing it and asking for trouble.

[Bob_Roller]

Even with the bike off, there is an electrical load on the battery with these ' electronic ' bikes .

But you should have gotten more life out of the battery than you did .

With the alternators that are on the newest bikes from BMW, they put out more at idle speeds than an R65 does at highway speeds, so I don't think that should be an issue .
Seems like batteries are not made as well as say 15 years ago .

I got my first Odyssey battery in '98, lasted 7 years, the second one lasted 30 months, that's when I went to generic AGM's, last about the same as the second Odyssey and cost one fourth .

[thrang]

I put it on a bmw tender if we're away for a winter break or the weather is so crappy I can't use it. (Has to be really bad for this though) The battery's never been flattened and although the bike does see a lot of use commuting to work all year round you'd think that would keep the battery in tip top nick. I'm kind of miffed that BMW put such crappy batts on their new bikes, because from asking on a facebook 1200 page it appears that battery's lasting less than 4 years is pretty common.  

[georgesgiralt]

Hello,
I'm not an expert on these new bikes, by far. But I've seen some of them have flooded type batteries. Could it be that it is needing water ?

[thrang]

My 1200 came with a sealed BMW Exide battery George. I'm replacing it with the AGM Motorworks recomended, so we'll see how we get on with that when it arrives on Wednesday.