Problem with battery dying solved.

[AL Elks]

Well I was pretty sure I had a bad battery from the get go. It would die after sitting for 2 weeks and near the end it would die within a week of sitting. I even had the dealer check it out when I had the frame recall done. Well today I decided to take the battery out and take it down to Advance Autoparts where they put it on their machine. It charged for about 15 minutes and then started testing the battery under load. Sure enough it was bad.

My Honda/Suzuki dealership had already closed and neither Autozone or Advance Auto Parts had a replacement that would fit the battery box so I went to the Yamaha dealership which stays open until 2:30 on Saturdays.

Long story short the battery cost me $90. If I didn't need the darn thing so bad I would have looked at the model number of the battery and bought it online.

Here's the YUASA part number:

YTX7A-BS
MFG# N32X7A

I just put the battery acid in and have to wait an hour before I put it on a slow charge overnight. I think this will solve my problem.

Now I'm going back to my dealer to see if they will replace the battery. It's out of the original warranty and under the extended warranty. I haven't looked to see if the extended warranty covers the battery and I wouldn't think it would but I'm going to get that sucker replaced by the dealer one way or another as I had this problem and pointed it out to them when it was still under warranty and they told me the battery was fine. I'll use the spare battery to hook to my LM1 for when I'm tuning.

[blholtz]

Issue is still not fixed I have gone that route twice with two batteries going bad. The stock one and one repacement.

Maybe I had two bad batteries, but I'm thinking there is still another issue, just haven't had a chance to work on it.

[AL Elks]

I'll let everyone know how it turns out. I have a suspicion that it's definately the battery. It could be that Suzuki got a bad batch of batteries. Time will tell.

[blholtz]

I guess you don't follow what I am trying to tell you.

I had the battery that came with the quad go bad and I then replaced it with another battery from a local wholesale battery shop and installed it and it to went BAD.

[blholtz]

This makes me think that there could possibly be an issue with the regulator/rectifier or the vibration that is created from the terrain and the engine is causing the damage to the battery internals.

Not sure but I have gone through two batteries and I do know a little something about mechanical things.

I'm not stabbing in the dark or knocking the LTR, I want to fix mine and help the rest that might have problems.

[AL Elks]

I see what you are saying now. I thought you replaced both with stock batteries.

I sure hope mine is just the battery though. If not I'll track down the problem one way or another. Good thing I purchased the extended warranty.

[mx1791]

did you guys take your lights out? maybe theres a problem like the yfz had once u take the lights out, idk

[AL Elks]

MIne's out!

[blholtz]

Mines out too, going to try and check the regulator/ rectifier today.

The voltage measurements ore in the service manual, I'll post when I find out more.

the other thought that I have is whether the battery box is secure and isolates the vibration from the battery.

[Pappy]

A small tip....


When you fill these batteries(activate) with the supplied acid pack, let them sit atleast 12 hours! with the cap off before charging.

I sell over 60,000 of these a year with less then a 1/2 percent return rate. Before we started allowing them to sit to fully absorb the acid we ran a return rate of almost 4%.

The issue with these batteries at alot of the dealerships is they do not follow these proceedures which is a must do. The new AGM batteries have almost zero shelf life and the factories (Yuasa) ships factory activated units at the launch of a new model wether it be an atv or motorcycle and we see the very problems found here. (Not saying this is the fix for this or every issue but its a culprit)

[AL Elks]

Good to know Pappy. That's something I hadn't thought about until the dealership mentioned it.

The dealership told me 1hr and to slow charge it. I put it on a 1.5amp charger which switches over to maintenance mode when it is fully charged.

Next go round I'm definately leaving it in longer before charging.

[AL Elks]

So far so good. It sat all week and fired right up this weekend. We'll see what happens in the following weeks.

[blholtz]

Same here. Checked the regulator/rectifier nothing wrong there, even checked the voltage of the battery with the light hooked back up to see if the problem was like the 04 yfz450's. Everything checked out there too.

Everything that I have tried to find the cause have not worked out.

Maybe I really did have bad luck and got ahold of two bad batteries.

[AL Elks]

I've only ridden it once since I put in the new battery so if something is frying it I don't have enough time on it yet for it to happen.

I have a sneaky suspiciion it was a bad battery though.

I'm sure hoping that's the case.

Time will tell!