Web Series | In Tune

Next up on our top 7 Spring Maintenance Essentials checklist is your motorcycle’s battery. If you watched our winter storage tips last fall, then hopefully you’ve had your motorcycle’s battery connected to a tender or maintainer for the past couple months. If that is indeed the case, then you should be all set to get back out on the road, once the snow has thawed. The same goes if you’ve hooked a battery to tender and stored it on a shelf – reinstall and you should be good to go. If you have been tending one of those old school batteries filled with water, be sure to top up the electrolyte levels with distilled water if the levels in the cells are down. After that, it should also be good to go right back in your motorcycle.

However, if you haven’t had your battery on a maintainer all winter, and it’s been sitting in your bike or up on a shelf this whole time, shame on you! You will now have to connect it to a trickle charger for a least 10 -12 hours and if it’s an old school battery, remember to check the electrolyte level and top up as necessary with distilled water before you hook up it up to the trickle charger.

For all motorcycle batteries it’s very important that they are installed properly. You have to make sure that they are securely strapped in place and double check that the terminals are connected firmly and properly. Make sure you have a clean connection – that means no grease. If there is any battery acid build-up on the terminals, clean things up with a stainless steel wire brush or apply a little baking soda and water with a good old-fashioned toothbrush. That should do the trick and you’ll be hitting the open road in no time.