Word of Warning

A quick word of warning for anyone who has fitted a Motobatt gel battery. Each battery has two multi-position terminals that you fit to suit the bike it is to be placed in, which is a great idea. However, it seems that the bolts supplied with the battery are prone to working their way loose and, as the terminals are themselves threaded you don’t have lock-nuts fitted.

I was coming home last week and the Tiger kept stuttering and losing power, although never actually stopping, and the speedo/rev-counter were going wild. I nursed the bike back home and did a quick online search fearing the worst, ie. something expensive had gone wrong. First site I checked suggested that I check the battery connections, another couple seemed to think that this was a common problem for anyone running this make of gel battery.

So, this morning I took the seat off and started the bike up. Seemed to be running fine until I jiggled the battery a bit and the engine cut out. Did the same thing again and once again it cut out. On closer inspection it turned out that bolts on both terminals were slightly loose. When I jiggled the leads, or when I hit a bump when out on the road, the battery was being disconnected, if only for a fraction of a second leading to the poor running and the wonky clocks.

I tightened everything up and it seemed to run just fine, so I went for a long run today and everything went smoothly.

The answer would seem to be longer bolts and a couple of lock-nuts. If you've got one fitted I'd give it a quick once over just to be on the safe side. Don’t say that you haven’t been warned.