Ahh, pretty sure I know what's going on.
Your bike is behaving normally. The problem is your battery discharging.
The manual flat out states that idling is not high enough rpm to be
net-positive charge to the battery. This perfectly matches your
description that after 10 minutes of being stopped or going really
slow, it dies. It dies because the battery is dead.
The battery was possibly not full to begin with (10 minutes is pretty
quick to drain a full battery, but, motocycle batteries are small).
If you make sure the battery is topped up, this should never happen.
Deep discharging a starter battery is crippling to it. Leaving it
deeply discharged is murder. Some starters can handle it 30 times,
some might die ('die' being, some tiny fraction of its energy stored)
after 5 deep discharges. Any lead acid left empty will begin to
sulfate, and may never be recoverable after a few weeks or months
sulfated.
So it may be that your battery needs to be replaced, but the problem
isn't the battery, the problem is discharging the battery which may
also be eventually killing it.
To fix this...
- Recharge your battery fully. It might just be stuck at 10% capacity
now (meaning it charges to full voltage, but doesn't hold a lot of
energy anymore). It may also have internal shorts from too much of the
plates sloughing off and laying at the bottom (meaning, it
self-discharges quickly even after it was charged fully). If it is,
too late, replace the battery. Focus on not letting the next one die.
- Keep your battery topped up via charger when parked for long
periods (lead acids will be significantly drained after only a month
or two).
- Don't let it sit and idle or run at super slow speed for a long
time. Put it on a charger.
- Buy a shitty $20 automotive solar panel from your favorite discount
crap store and throw that on the bike when parked. No fancy brains
needed, solar is weak enough it won't overcharge it. Little ones are
usually fabric backed and can be rolled up.
If you're feeling fancy:
- Replace lead acid with Lithium Iron (tool packs). Their
self-discharge rate is 100x lower.
My two cents.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Nighthawk Motorcycle Lovers!" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to nighthawk_lovers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to nighthawk_lovers@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/nighthawk_lovers.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
