Hi, Bought my first Ducati in November last year, 899 panigale. Since then I’ve had nothing but trouble with 2 different batteries. I have a Oxford oximiser but my battery still goes flat after a while. After a run out it shows 12.5 but after a couple of weeks it shows 10.3 and the battery is flat! Anyone had the same problems?
aint got a 899 but had problems on my 900ss turned out to be a usb charger i had fitted. you have anything like that fitted or an alarm?
no mate, as far as I know just the standard Ducati security system on the bike. Which surely shouldn’t drain the battery like that.
Charge it and leave it disconnected. If it's still good after 2 weeks it's the bike. If not it's the battery. My money is always on the battery being dead.
on my 748 i had a datatool alarm that used to drain the battery... old school tech though and you'd thin. things have moved on a lil!!!
If you have a multimeter you could connect that, with the ignition OFF & in series with the battery positive terminal & see it there is any drain on the battery. Also, with the engine running see what voltage is across the battery terminals. It should be around 14.5 volts.
Is the battery optimiser connected during that 2 week period? If not then it may be you have a drain on the battery even when not in use which is causing the voltage drop. If it is then .... Is the battery sealed or one that can be topped up? I had a situation once where my optimiser was in fact not optimising but just continually charging, caused the battery to boil the acid out, as the acid level fell so did the charge It could hold. I couldn’t work out the issue until one day I noticed the battery was almost completely devoid of liquid. By which time it was completely FUBAR and had to be replaced. It was a new battery as well as I’d initially put the problem down to the original battery just being very old.
What battery did you buy and what is the Cold Cranking Amps rating for it? My Mutley has a cheap £30 battery on it when I bought it and despite it being less than 2 yrs old and kept charged it struggled to turn over the engine, swapped it out for a Yuasa and had no problems, and that’s not keeping it on a charger either.
JMT maintenance free gel battery, cold crank is about 11.6 ish, after a run out it is 12.6 + after 2-3 weeks sittin on the oximiser it drops to 10.4 ish and won’t start
I was just joking at the Lithium comment above. It's used to treat bipolar disorder (which is not funny!). I'll just go dig a hole and jump in....
