BMW motorcycle battery testing, removal, trickle charging and jump starting. 

This page is about BMW motorcycle batteries, but applies to most lead acid batteries. 

Which cable should be removed first?

A lead acid battery can produce hydrogen gas.  It is extremely explosive.  One must use procedures to insure safe operation around a battery.  Here are a few tips. 

All current drawing devices (ignition, lights etc) should always be turned off before trying to disconnect a battery.  One wants no current flow to assure that there is no spark as a cable is lifted off.  A circuit malfunction may exist and be drawing current all of the time.  There is no easy way to know that without having the cable disconnected. 

If one removes the positive (ungrounded) cable first and accidentally allows the tool to touch a ground, sparks will fly.  If some circuit is drawing current, then a spark can occur.  For that reason it is best to always first remove the cable that is grounded and that is usually the negative one.  If one wants to go further, remove it at the ground end, not the battery end.  Any spark will then be away from the potentially explosive gasses of the battery.

Remove the negative first and attach it last. 

Connecting the charger is also dangerous.  I suggest connecting it while the charger is unplugged and/or turned off.  I like to flash the two clamps together first to see that they don't spark.  I have been surprised more than once in 45 years of doing this.  Don't worry, at least with the older analog type charger, you won't damage it by a fast flash.   On the new "smart chargers" one would damage the electronics.   Check the clamps once they are on the battery terminals by wiggling them a bit before turning the charger on.  If your charger has a lower setting, always use it first to check for a low current flow.  I like to start with the Variac set at zero. 

Frequent battery inspection

This one is simple.  Inspect the terminal connections for corrosion and frayed wires.  Make sure that it is fastened down securely.  Take a look at the level of the acid.  Do not allow the acid level to be above the line or the plate.  If the acid level is too high the battery has a greater chance to boil over and onto the frame.  I highly recommend using dielectric grease on the terminals.  Any type of grease is better than dry.  Vaseline would work well too. 

Battery removal, /2 (late 55 thru 69)

Remove the air cleaner, wide rubber battery strap and the wires.  The battery strap can be a pain to remove.   Grab it from above and one hand on each side of the strap and push down.   The battery will come out forwards and to the left easily.  The battery in the early Earles fork bikes was 90 X 80 X 162 mm.   In mid 57, for the USA only, it was upgraded to 120 X 90 X 165 mm high.  At that same time, many other changes were made for that series. 

Battery removal, /5, /6 and /7 (1970-80)

Generally the battery comes out the top.  Don't waste the time to remove the air cleaner and associated parts.  The two bolts holding the rear frame section onto the main frame section may need to be loosened or removed for the larger battery on the LWB models.   

Trickle charge your BMW battery

At my age I know a lot about trickles, and something about BMW motorcycle battery trickle chargers too. 

The only difference between a trickle charger and a BIG ASS CHARGER is it's charge voltage while under load.  With a higher charge voltage, the battery will draw a higher current.  It is the charger's ability to deliver that larger current that makes it a BIG ASS CHARGER.  A charger that has a high voltage, but no capacity to deliver the current, quickly has it's voltage drawn down to a smaller amount and little current. 

It is easy and safe to buy a trickle charger designed for a motorcycle battery.  They seem to cost as much as a car charger.  Why is that? Why waste the money? I bet that you already have a charger.  One of my tricks is to use any charger, of any capacity, to trickle charge.  With all of the new exciting technology we can now go to a flea market and buy the once expensive "old stuff", for nothing.  I use a variable transformer, called a Variac, to adjust the mains voltage that the charger plugs into.  Normally you are stuck with whatever is available at the wall outlet.  A Variac will use the "wall voltage" and adjust it to any amount from 130 down to nothing.  If you have a charger with an ammeter that you trust, you can use it to trickle charge.  Here is how I do it. 

This is a very small Variac, but plenty large enough for using to adjust the current on a typical 6 amp charger.  This one came out of some type of electronic equipment and needs to be wired up to work.  I usually get these for $1. 

The side view showing the connections for input and output. 

This is the back of the Variac.  The legend shows which lugs are for what and the capacity of 1.75 amps.  That is at 117 VAC or about 200 total watts.  See the three lugs on the right side? They connect to the ends of the circular wound transformer.  At the left side is the wiper (adjustable part) that makes connection to the various windings.  Make sure that you find no broken wires on the transformer, as that is about all that can go wrong with this type of transformer.  This type of Variac needs to be mounted on something to protect it from shorting out on something.  I use whatever box I have laying around.  I found these are really useful if the charger has room to mount this small Variac inside of it. 

This is a slightly larger Variac that I mounted in a sort of box with a switch, AC meter and an outlet for the charger to use.  I use this one for general electronic work that may require anything from 0 to 130 VAC.  This means that I can take the wall voltage, about 120 volts AC, and increase it slightly or decrease it to zero. 

This is probably the best deal for a trickle charger.  It is commercially made.  It has the cord, a somewhat calibrated dial, on/off switch, fuse, outlet for the variable voltage and an "on light".  This one is 10 amps, much larger than needed, but is very convenient to use.  It is ready to go.  It is also more expensive and heavy. 

Plug the Variac into the wall.  Plug the charger into the Variac.  The charger should have an ammeter built in or one should be added to one of the wires going to the battery.  Attach the charger wires to the battery.  Adjust the current reading on the charger by turning the big knob on the Variac.  That's it.  It is really easy. 

The enemy of charging is heat.  Go back in an hour and put your hand against the side of the battery.  You should not feel more than a few degrees of temperature increase.  A trickle charge will take 24 hours or so.  Again check the battery temperature.  It may feel slightly warmer than before, but only very slightly.  If the battery is hot, then you know that it was being overcharged.  A slower charge is safer and will help the battery life too. 

A normal charge rate is 10%. For a typical BMW battery of 20 amp hour rating, that would be a charge of 2 amps. After 12-24 hours you should see that the current has tapered off to less than one amp. The battery is charged up to its capacity. To trickle charge it, use even less current. I would suggest about 1/2 amp for at least 24 hours. The current won't taper off so much with a trickle charge. The reason is that even with a full charge, a battery will continue to take a small amount of current. The idea is to start with a current somewhat above that minimum current and let it taper down slowly.

An old 20 amp battery no longer is a 20 amp battery. The capacity start decreasing on the first charge. It tapers off slowly to the point that it no longer will crank the starter. It may now be a 5 amp battery. To charge it at 10% would mean 1/2 amp. Your old used battery is of an unknown capacity and it is better to charge it at less than the original amount.

I actually use this Variac method more often to charge bike batteries at the normal rate. A charger for a car can easily over charge a smaller battery. With a Variac, I can adjust it to whatever I want. Variacs are available in much larger sizes too, some weigh 100 lbs. Some are for 240 VAC, so check it before buying. For three phase power they stack three on the same shaft, one for each phase.

An example of filling and charging a new BMW motorcycle battery. 

This battery is for a /2 that is getting converted to 12 volts with the MZ-B kit.  It just barely fits into the space for a battery on the /2 twin.  This battery came with the acid in a container specially designed to allow easy filling of the battery. 

This shows the battery and acid container. 

The black plastic cap is removed and kept.  It does not seal the acid in the container.  The acid is sealed in with a piece of metal tape.  Then I set the acid container on top of the battery and push it down.  The battery has a knife in each cell that automatically punches a hole in the acid container.  Now the acid starts draining into the cells.  It will take several minutes for it to all drain into the battery case.  This is really clean and simple when compared to the old way of doing it.  The chance of acid spills and damage are greatly reduced.  I have done this twice just recently and not one drop of acid was dripped onto my workbench. 

The acid has drained in and the battery is now full.  At that point the voltage measured 12 volts and was climbing all by itself. 

The "setup" for charging a battery

With the acid added to the battery it started heating up.  That is normal, so don't worry about it.  One "should" let it set for a couple of hours to cool off before starting the charge.  In this case it was late evening and I wanted it to charge overnight and be ready for use in the morning.  I decided to start charging it at that time.  Charging also heats up a battery.  If I had started the charge at the usual 10% of the amp hour rating of 12 amps, my charge of 1.2 amps "could" have added enough heat to make it hotter than desired.  Put your hand on a battery that has been filled for 10-15 minutes, it is quite hot.  You don't ever want your charging to make it that hot.  Now is where the Variac comes in.  I am using the homemade one shown above.  I just adjusted the Variac to provide the charger with just enough voltage to give me the desired charge current.  I decided to charge it at about 1/2 amp.  That is a really low trickle, but enough to charge it up.  It is far better to charge a battery slowly than at a fast rate.  

This shows the output voltage of the Variac.  I really have no interest in the fact that it is 104 volts, only that I get the desired charging current.  Within one hour the charge voltage had risen to 12.48.  In the morning I found that the current had dropped to .3 amps and the charge voltage had risen to 13.89 shown below.  That could sound like it is not fully charged up, so I increased the charge current to about .6 amps and that required a voltage of 14.2.  That showed me that the battery was fully charged.  I arrived at the .6 amps by knowing that if I had used the 10% rule to fully charge it, the current would drop to about 1/2 of the starting current, or .6 amps. 

What I am trying to say is that I wanted to safely charge the battery overnight.  I didn't want to risk overheating it, so I lowered the charge rate to just less than 1/2 of the standard 10%.  By morning it had fully charged. 

My final charge voltage. 

Fake marketing     

I have always gotten a kick out of the advertising on chargers saying that they are engineered to automatically adjust the voltage down to meet the need.  That is crap.  They have no choice in the matter.  As the voltage on the battery goes up, the amount of difference is less and so is the current.  They didn't engineer it, they were limited by physics.  A totally natural limit is advertised as some "valuable thing" that only they have. 

Now, recently, some new games are being played with chargers, but that is recent and doesn't apply to the older simple transformer types.  They might be called "smart chargers" or "battery tenders" or some such.  These automatically stop charging when the battery reaches some predetermined voltage.  When the internal leakage drops the voltage down again, it starts charging again.  That is fine only if the charger is made for that type and size of battery.  With the current variety of batteries and types, we would need several of these expensive chargers to fulfill the needs.