Battery Check, Clean and Removal

Okay. Next up on our list. We're going to check out the battery here and actually what we're going to do today just besides tightening the cables, we're actually going to remove the battery show you how all that is done. This is where the battery is on a touring motorcycle. It's always been right under the seat. It's just a little more hidden right now cause they got the ECU right on top of it. So basically there's a plastic tab here, you can just kind of push that aside and there is an ECU in it kind of just plop that over the side. Couple other little things here. They're basically just on a little sliding clip and either push or pull that one you just pull back, you can see little groove the slot goes in, get that out of the way. There's a little purge valve here same thing. You just got to figure out which way they go and push it on them, not a big deal. Next up, T 40 socket. You got two bolts holding it on here, here and here, pretty straight forward. And really you do got to do this just to get to the positive cable to verify that thing ain't come a loose, cause motor still rubber mounted basically every 5,000 miles you're going to want to check it cause they will come loose. Set them right there. Now that front part kind of hooks into a little steel bracket here you kind of push it forward roll it over and get that out of the way. We're going to actually get these out of the way too. I just kind of wanted to see what way they are encapsulated. It's probably simple enough just pull it right out of there. It's got a little push pin style connector same thing with the white one. And you'll notice right on here, it says black and gray. They don't want you to mixing them for some reason. So go ahead and set the tray aside. Okay. Now you can actually see the battery, that's a good thing. So normally you're doing your 5k, you're basically just going to go ahead and torque these a two battery cable, negative and positive. We're going to actually pull the battery out though, so negative cable, go ahead and take that off. It's kind of nice back in like 2009 they went to the post Mount. So it's a little more accessible than the older touring models which were kind of on the side. A little cumbersome. Get screws out of the way and then you're just going to push the cables off to the side, because what they've done is they've kind of incorporated this little strap right here for the battery. Cause it's heavy and hard to get onto. Now another tool we got for aftermarket batteries is goes alongside the battery like this. You're able to pull it out trying to keep the cables off the side of the battery like that and then get your hand out there quickly so obviously you don't drop the battery. Now we can go ahead and kind of clean up the terminals here and take a look at the cables themselves. Okay. You can see we got the battery out here on the bench and when they say maintenance free, guess what? It's really maintenance free. There really isn't much to do. You're basically going to take a wire brush clean up the terminals here because really all you want is a really good connection. And that's why Harley's kind of obsessed with checking the battery cables cause the thing being rubber mode it's going to move around a lot and it tends to make them things come loose. So clean that up, take a look at your cables. You've got your negative cable here. I mean, this thing's pretty much a new motorcycle so everything's still good shape. But five, six years down the road you're going to be looking, depending on how many miles you got on the bike you're going to be doing a lot more thorough inspection on your negative cable and positive cable. You get a broken cable, it's not good. So go ahead and clean them off. You used to see like a good OEM battery lasts forever but it kind of comes down to really what you're subjecting the motorcycle to. And he'd do a lot of intone ride and where you're starting and stopping a lot, a lot of heat. And you're not going to get the life expectancy you used to get on your battery. I mean, typically we're putting a battery in a motorcycle every four to five years. So it's not like your car where you're going to get a ten-year run. You might be the anomaly and that you might get lucky and it might go eight years or something. But if your battery starts showing you signs, put a new battery in it and put a good quality battery in it to where your cable is going to meet right to the terminal on the battery. If you're buying an aftermarket battery that has little spacers or something not a good setup. I mean, it's going to intensify making the thing come loose and have a poor connection. You're going to pull the seat off and you're going to see the terminals all melted and deteriorated. And that's really what you're trying to avoid. So spend the big money, either get OEM or really good quality aftermarket battery if you're going to buy a new battery. So let's go ahead and put this in. Oh, one other thing. Now this motorcycle doesn't have a siren for the security. If your motorcycle did, look in the manual, they got a procedure where you turn the ignition switch on and pull the main fuse with the fob next to the ECU. That way you don't have the siren going off when you're trying to swap a battery out. Cause it's really annoying. So refer to your manual, it's pretty straightforward. Okay. So nice heavy battery. We're going to drop it back in here. Grab our little tool and you can see here's your little strap cable, little helper cable. We're going to lay that out right here. Kind of comes in handy if you don't have one especially if you're on the side of the road somewhere. These cables kind of tuck them up out of the way if you can because you don't want to put the battery down on that. So put your hand under there. Basically just straight in. You want to make sure you get that rate down in the battery tray. Here's our little cable strap for next time. Life's wonderful. First thing's first, positive cable goes on. Grab our screws. Okay. We're just going to snug them up with Phillips here. There's a spec in the manual, 60 to 70 inch pounds. We'll probably split it and put it right in the middle. Inch pound torque wrench. Okay. If you had a battery tender or any accessory lead obviously that you'd be putting that on at this time but it appears he doesn't have anything on there. We're going to put a little bit of dielectric grease on there as well just a little protective coating. Do that if he got something like that, I think it actually says in there you can use petroleum jelly if you got any of that lying around. Okay, we're going to put a little plastic tray back in and button this up. Go ahead grab that. Same thing you got your little slot here it's got to go over that steel little elbow. It's got some accessory wires here you don't want to pinch them under your tray or anything. Okay. It feels pretty good. Let's put the two screws back in. In all reality it's actually a pretty good idea to carry like a 10 millimeter wrench or a Phillips screwdriver, cause I get the phone call a lot. People are on the side of the road or they're somewhere in their bikes clicking. I always ask them, hey, check your battery cables? Somethings are coming loose. It's going to do something funky like that to where your motorcycle's going to kind of click or it'll seem like the battery is dead. And what it's doing is it's kind of melting the battery cable on the poles because it's so loose. So you probably should have some tools in your motorcycle anyway just for stuff like that. Okay. This one goes right back into its little receptacle slip it in, same thing with this one. These two you just pushed them back in, gray goes to gray, black goes to black. ECU same thing, goes right into it's little slot here. Push it in kind of take a peek make sure you don't get unpinched. Looks good. We're going to move on to the next topic.