It's that time of year again! Once again my Shorai battery has packed up and left me unable to ride. This is the third time now and I can't even be bothered to work out what's up with the thing. I've taken it all off the bike and it still won't take a charge through the Shorai charger I have and just flashes an error code at me.

I'm going back to my original old fashioned battery.

Can anyone in the UK point me to the best place on line to get a good quality battery at a reasonable price? KTM have them listed at £180 But I have found some places on line that sell them for about £80.

Hi Bic,
I have tried Yuasa (2 or 3) and Banner, last year I fitted Delo, my wife could hear the difference on spinning the engine up, she was in the house, rides bikes and has agood ear for these things. I my Delo purchased from Getgeared in the UK, cost less than Yuasa at, I think, £80 ish. Delivery was next day.

Check out the Delo web site to give you confidence in the build quality.

I just had a quick look at the Getgeared web site, the Delo for our bikes is not showing , perhaps worth a phone call to Getgeared. If they can’t help, try Louis France/Germany at 120 Euros.

Bic,

100 Euros from Germany

Bic,
I've had plenty of bike batteries from Berkshire Parts and Panels at Aldermaston near Reading - local for me, less so for you I guess.
Definitely worth giving them a call on 0118 981 7555 to get a quote.

Google 'battery for honda 1300 pan european' and you'll find plenty of Yuasa YTZ14S-BS cheaper than that.

Mate,

I have some LiFe thing on mine. Never charged it, left for months on end and starts the bike first time every time. Honestly it's totally trouble free and when I looked it up on the internet it was also much cheaper than the bran name options often featured here. Can't remember the name but I'm happy to look tonight if you want to know?

If I recall, when I had my original log into this site, it was I who first pointed out the Honda ST1300 had the same battery and at that time Honda dealers were selling Yuasa batteries subsidised by Honda UK. I was probably the first to benefit from a Honda subsidised battery on a KTM 990.

Yes you can get Yuasa cheaper than a Delo, further more you could get a battery for £35 for the 990. A good purchase if you are about to sell the bike next week.

To be little more blunt about the Delo batteries, after 40 years of riding and buying/caring for batteries of the traditional style , my experience has been Delo wins. The German tests seem to back up my experience to date.

My bike is a long termer, I am happy to pay for more for better.

Thanks for all this info. Much appreciated.

Before I go back to big batteries I have ordered a new Shorai lead from battery to charger as, (after talking to Shorai dealer), they say my error code is showing that the lead is damaged and not that the battery is dead. We will see. £8 further investment will be better than the cost of a new battery nut if it doesn't work the Shorais are going to get junked!

I've been googling up the Shorai and I can't believe how many other bike forums have threads about these batteries dying and cells not charging up evenly and generally a load of trouble. I might be in the minority but I've had trouble every year I've owned one of these batteries. OK, maybe I should have always had it on a trickle charge, especially over the winter months, but I don't expect a £150 battery to just die after a year and not be able to be recharged. It seems like once they get below a certain drain that are unrevivable.

Bic,

Just my 2 penny's worth.

The original battery on my SD failed bang on it's 3rd birthday in 2009 - pretty common time scale.

This was replaced with a Varta one which has lasted until this year, can't complain at 6 years to be honest.

As weird as it seems but I'm sure with the new battery the bike feels livelier (?).

Can't remember the price but Bristol Batteries (in Truro) did a cracking deal through a trade connection of mine (£45?).

I ran a lithium (SSB) in my 990 and will also in the 1290 when it comes time to replace it.
1/2 The size
1/3rd of the weight
30% More CCA
Longer life
2/3rd of the price

For what it's worth, just ordered one from here http://www.mdsbattery.co.uk/shop/produc ... oupID=2048

Ha. That's the place I found to get a lead/acid battery if I need to. Seems the best place for a genuine Yuasa.

Still waiting for my replacement Shorai lead to check things out.Was meant to be here today but no luck.

Just my 10 bobs worth on the Shorai Bic....

Ive got one in my 1290 as we speak that i originally purchased for my TV4 and then went into my Hyper 821sp

So probably around 3 year old without any problems, I do put it on the Genuine Shorai charger now and again but always seams fully charged within minutes...

Shame there's no standard on these batteries as i thought the Shorai was the best of the bunch

Just out of curiosity I had a look at what the OME YTX14BS battery CCA and weight fitted to the 1290 is and found Specs of 200CCA and 3.7kg
Looked at the SSB Lithium and it is 290CCA and 1.1kg
The high performance SSB is 425CCA and 1.1kg

So I got my replacement cables today and when I connected them up from the charger to the battery I no longer got a three flash fault code as before (which meant there was a bad connection or damaged cable)

This time I get a four flash fault code which means that there is cell unbalance (which is better because at least the charger is working properly). Shorai advise that if this happens then you put the charger on 'store' mode for 24 hours which should re balance the cells and then you can charge it up properly after that. Which I have done. So fingers crossed for tomorrow when we shall see what happens.

Shoai update.

24 hours later the amber and green light are still flashing alternately indicating cell imbalance. So I keep it on for another 24 hours just to be sure I'd tried everything.

48 hours later the charger has now reverted to a constant amber showing that the battery is at 60+% charge and so I press the charge button and it goes to flashing green indicating a proper charge up is commencing. What this tells me is that my original cable has developed a fault over the years and does not work properly so even when I was plugging it into the charger every so often for a top up it wasn't doing this. What I've read on the internet is that without the charger being used periodically, as a diagnostic and remedy tool, this cell imbalance develops and then gets worse over time - it doesn't matter how good the bike is charging the battery under power, the fault gets progressively worse. So what I will do in future is use the charger to recondition the battery every week or so no matter whether I think it needs a trickle charge to keep topped up or not.

Looks like I may have rescued this battery after all. We'll see if it can crank the engine later on today.

If so I will have a go with the same technique with the other Shorai I have in a drawer that I had written off a few years ago.

I use an optimate charger all year round, so I expect this solves these issues ?