Well folks, I had the SAVAGE for two years now and the battery is on the verse of slow death. Today I have to push start with the help of my 2 coworker. I took a couple of try but doable. 2 year is kind of short life span for battery!!

My question is "How long did your battery last and what brand is it?"

Any recommendation for replacement?

Thanks
Tim

The old fashioned flooded lead-acid battery can be had for as little as $15.  Self discharges to the point of being unable to start the bike after a few months of sitting.  Takes serious harm if you leave the lights on and drain it flat.  The water in the cells evaporates and needs to be watched and topped up -- 'cause if you let the plates get exposed to air you pretty near have killed the battery.  

An Absorbed Glass Mat battery is considered to be "dry" as the acid is contained in the mat and cannot spill.  The mats stop the plates from touching due to vibration.  The battery is sealed and never needs maintenance.  It's self discharge rate is about a tenth of a flooded cell and can maintain a starting charge while sitting unused for several months.  It can recover from full discharge.

I picked up a Yuasa sealed battery -- but that was before I looked up AGM.  In my favorites, in a motorcycle folder, I have a $50 Big Crank <u>bookmarked</u>

My factory battery is 2 years 5 months old & so far it's still working fine. I had to add a little distilled water last year & I'll check it again this month.

My battery is over 4 years old now. I pull it out each year and top it off with distilled water, then put the charger on it and make sure it tapers back to zero.
I'm in Florida where batterys don't do well in the heat, but my 650 has been garage kept at night. It  still has to endure hell in the day. Keep an eye on it!

If you are a *GOOD* person and maintain the electrolyte level and refrain from heavily discharging and quick charging the battery, it'll last FAR longer.

Me?  Arrive home, throw down the kickstand to kill the engine, go into the house to have lunch.  'Bout two hours later wife calls -- she forgot to pack a sandwich in her lunch, would I mind?  So I get sandwich, hop on the bike, go to turn on the key -- oops!  It is already on.  Hit the started, waaa waaa gasp....  Pop off the tool cover, clip a lead to the terminal, ground the other lead, switch on, switch to 10 amp charge, count to 30, fire up the Savage, remove clips, deliver wife's lunch.  Probably knocked a year off the battery's lifespan.

People mock the cost of Mil Spec items, claiming that brand X is just as good.  And it very well may be.  But the military will be using items in the field, no where near a shop to buy a replacement, and if an item fails people could die.  Mil Spec is up at the ludicrous level of reliability, well past the upper end of cost-benefit.

I think the cheap trickle charger that I bought from Walmart kill my battery. It supposed to switch from charging to trickle when the battery is fully charged. Well I plugged it in at night before I go to sleep and in the morning it still show charging-RED light instead of GREEN. I rode the bike for an hour on that day so it should not take more than 1 hour to switch to GREEN.

Lesson here: Stay away from those cheap chargers made by Bell. You will pay one way or another. So go for the good quality charger folks.

Hi- just curious, but what is a colloidal silver maker and what do you do with it, ??Silver coatings?