I've read of a few folk having battery or starting issues and thought I would share my experience. My 09 HRC started playing up earlier this year, poor starting etc, a few checks revealed a duff battery, no worries, checked over by dealer on a service and new battery fitted. Thought that was the end of my problems. Wrong! The bike would start fine, a short run to get fuel or to a mates house and the bike would struggle to restart, even had to bump start it a few times. Though it couldn't be the battery so started checking the sensors, wiring etc, even changed the coolant temp sensor as a faulty one of these can throw up some similar symptoms apparantly. The problems persisted until I got fed up and did some research on the Interweb. The Poweroad battery fitted by my dealer (not a Yuasa as one would expect) was the correct battery for the blade but the all important CCA, Cold Cranking Amps, was specced at a mere 80. The Yuasa battery was specced at 130CCA. Having found out that CCA can be a critical factor especially with modern fuel injected engines i paid a visit to a local Auto Electrical dealer who is a Yuasa stockist. They also do Lucas parts. They didn't have a Yuasa battery which would have been £70 or more but they did have a Lucas equivalent. A quick test showed the Lucas battery to have 150CCA. After parting with a mere £29 for the Lucas battery I considered it worth a punt. 3 weeks later, the bike only being used on a Sunday morning and not recharged other than by the bike running I have had no problems, short run, stop start no problems. So, If you are replacing a battery make sure of the spec including the CCA first, not all batteries are equal even though it is the correct fitment for the bike.
Nice one. I've always replaced with Yuasas but will check the Lucas's out next time. Out of interest, does anyone know what CCA those lightweight racing batteries pump out? ISTR someone on here fitting one and raving about them?
Had a similar tale with my old 205 GTi. It had a known issue of struggling to tick over when the alternator was working hard and stop/go commuting in the winter just kept making it stall. It killed the battery and the alternator in the end so I replaced them both with the ones from the 205 GRD. The CCA of that battery was about a third higher than the original. I still had to left foot brake in traffic at night, but the battery never cooked again.
Hey Gregr, when you take that battery back, make sure there are other people in the shop while you have your , discussion!
It's a Lucas LYTZ7S. Time will tell if it's a good battery or not, the funny thing with batteries is some will last for years, other peg it around 3 years. Had an RR5 before my RR9 and the batteries pegged it at 3 years on both - The Honda workshop manual for the RR9 makes note of this I think
Thanks Ray, some power in that one but it's the YTZ10 which fits RR4 to RR7 models - RR8 onwards need a YTZ7 battery which is physically smaller.
I changed my battery, only cause i had let my old one discharge over the winter a couple of times.... i got a motobatt one, it was about 210 CCA I think and higher 6.5A rating...that extra .5 A helps
Well....went to my dealer in a good mood and had a nice chat with the service manager. I explained the story and he seemed to be quite sympathetic. The end result being a credit on my account for what I'd paid for the battery (to be used against my next service) so as good a result as I could've expected
