A friend told me I need to start the GS500 and run it every so often during the winter. I tried doing that last weekend, but it was **** cold. It would crank, but wouldn't start. It was cranking slow, so I think I just need to charge the battery. It's a 12V battery, right? It doesn't say on it, and I can't find it in Clymer. Can I jump start it from my pickup truck like I would a car, or is there some sort of special motorcycle charger I need to get? I have a '93 GS500E if that helps.

you can use a car battery to jump it, HOWEVER do NOT have the car engine running when jumpstarting

Cool, thanks. Why not?

you can nuke your bike's electricals.

Quote from: spcterry on January 08, 2008, 11:29:12 PM
you can nuke your bike's electricals.

yup. and a car battery has enough balls to do it on its own  btw it is +12v

I disagree, in fact I do a running jump start everytime I need one. If the operating voltages are the same, the batteries corectly connected in parrallel and there is no fault with the donor vehicles charging system there will be no problems.

All this talk about high voltages and currents being introduced into to the bikes electrical system is not true. The max voltage the bike will see will be the same voltage the battery on the donor vehicle sees when charging...... If it was any higher or had an AC element it would be frying the donor vehicles battery.

The bikes electrical system will only draw the current it needs to spin the starter-motor, that current being confined to the starter motor circuit. (Remember Ohms law? Current flow is
proportional to load). The reg/rect will see full voltage across the battery, think it is fully charged and shunt the generator output to earth until the donor battery is disconnected.

OK, I have researched it a bit and if connected in parallel, theoretically there should be no problem.  Sledge, as is quite typical, is very accurate in his statement.  However, I would definitely not try connecting in series, that could be rather catastrophic.

Yeah, I jumped off a running car before, and there weren't any problems. Sledge is right, 12 volts is 12 volts, and your bike will pull as much amperage as it needs to start. Even though a car's electrical system has a much higher amp rating, your bike won't pull that many amps. I like to think of it in terms of gas pressure: If you tap off of a really fat pipe, but the pressure is 15psi, the pressure that you get in your tap is 15psi, regardless of how fat the pipes are.

Also, it's pretty useful to be able to push-start your bike. It's really helpful in the situations where nobody is around to give you a jump.

Riding year round here in NE Ohio for the past 23 years I've jump started all of my bikes including the 2 GSs many times from the car.  I always leave the car turned off while jumping the bike.

Sometimes in jumping a car from a car folks will hook up the jumpers and then sit there reving up the jumper car for a while to warm the car battery being jumped and put a little charge in it.  Don't do that when bike jumping, leave it off or at least at idle is my advice.

It's all 12v sorta, but a fully charged battery can measure 13v and a car charging system can put out 14-15 volts when revved up.  This was true of the pre-historic dc systems we adjusted regulators for over a half century ago anyway.

There was talk of diodes in the bike system being damaged on certain bikes some years ago when revving up jumper cars while jumping a bike.  Can't comfirm this as fact but why push your luck, leave the car turned off while jumping.  For sure the bike starter system will draw no more amperage than required.

If you get a good jumper cable connection from the jumper car or truck to the bike it will spin the bike starter faster then it's own battery ever did and start it almost instantly if nothing else is wrong.

It doesn't matter how much you rev a car or truck, if your jumping from the car battery connected to the bike battery or anything else, all you will ever get is 12V or the equivalent from the car battery. The car revving is charging is own battery, if it was putting out more volts than the battery could cope with the doner car battery would be fried before anything else. As stated before.

It doesn't matter if you have the car running, revving or what ever, your still only going to get the same.

Hummm, this is pretty interesting. In the maintenace class I took this past fall the instructor said not to jump a motorcycle off a running car battery. He said that you can pretty much jump off any battery just dont put a load on that donor battery, also make sure you are using motorcycle cables. Good topic because I am sure it is something we have all wondered about.

Quote from: Kasumi on January 09, 2008, 08:21:31 AM
It doesn't matter how much you rev a car or truck, if your jumping from the car battery connected to the bike battery or anything else, all you will ever get is 12V or the equivalent from the car battery. The car revving is charging is own battery, if it was putting out more volts than the battery could cope with the doner car battery would be fried before anything else. As stated before.

It doesn't matter if you have the car running, revving or what ever, your still only going to get the same.

A running car will actually charge the dead bike battery once the jumpers are hooked up at as much as 14.5 volts or possibly even more if the car has a faulty voltage regulator.  You can hook up car jumpers to a dead car and the dead car won't turn over but then sit there and rev the jumping cars engine for a few minutes and the dead car will then turn over.

Why worry about it, I'll just leave the jumping car turned off, it will easily start the bike that way with a good jumper connection.

Quote from: Kasumi on January 09, 2008, 08:21:31 AM
It doesn't matter how much you rev a car or truck [...] all you will ever get is 12V or the equivalent from the car battery.

Hmmm ... that seems like a pretty-all-encompassing statement.  Anyone care to check this with a meter?  I'd do it myself, but my car looked like this this morning, and it's still kinda yucky outside....



Here's a blurb from a who-knows-how-official page called Car Batteries Are Not 12 volts:

     In the most common configuration, the car battery has six cells, each producing
     about 2.1 volts. Thus the total battery output voltage is about 12.6 volts.

OK, so the "equivalent" Kasumi referred to is probably 12.6V instead of 12V.  No problem ... the same is probably true of our motorcycle batteries.

But to charge a car or truck(or motorcycle) battery you have to supply voltage to it at a certain threshold (or higher).  These quotes from further along on the same page backs up something gsJack said:

     Most cars supplied with hybrid batteries have their voltage regulators set to
     14.3 volts, although it is reported that the higher 14.8 volt setting of GM cars does
     no harm if the water level is checked regularly.
     [...]
     Older vehicles with voltage regulators set at about 14.0 volts simply will not fully
     charge lead/calcium or hybrid batteries.

So depending on the chemistry of the battery that a given car or truck is designed for, its voltage regulator (which supplies regulated voltage from the alternator only when the vehicle is running) may put out a higher voltage than others.

Granted, a similar difference in voltage probably holds for the batteries themselves, depending on their internal chemistry....

At any rate, I'm with gsJack.  A car/truck battery that's in any kind of good shape will have plenty of "oomph" to jump start our little GS500s without using the vehicle's charging system as well.  Charging the bike's battery should be left to its own alternator + regulator/rectifier while it's running, or a plugged-in charger while it's at home. 

Wow, thanks guys. I didn't mean to trigger a debate, but I appreciate the advice. I'll give it a try when I get a chance. If I can find my meter, I'll let you know what it says.

I recall a while back there was a suggestion that two cars bumpers touching could be a bad thing. That was when cars/trucks had metal bumpers, and something about a high voltage spike. My memory has failed the important parts.

I've jumped bikes, 4 wheelers, motorcycles, trucks, traactors, cars, mopeds, so many things I can't really remember all of them. (this might be a trend). So far I've done it the right way, as the vehicle needed a jump started, and neither them, nor I exploded, caught fire, or suffered electrocution.

Get the cables wrong, and it's not going to be pretty.

It should be mentioned that if the battery is purging hydrogen or damaged, (jumper or jumpie) it can EXPLODE with some serious force. I've only heard one battery go, it was on a 280zx and it was a tremendous explosion, covering everything within 10 feet with battery acid.

Where your goggles, gloves, etc and shield yourself with the hood of the car(s) while you're jumping. You only get one set of eyes

Here's some thoughts on what can happen if both the car and bike are left running after starting the bike, battle of the regulators, bike looses:

http://www.shadowriders.org/faq/jumpstarting.html

Even though I always turn car off while jumping, I still disconnect the cables from the bike as soon as it starts, clamp one cable to the other to keep them seperated, and throw them on the ground to tend to the bike.

What ohgood says about exploding batteries is very rare and most likely to happen with a non sealed mc battery than a sealed car battery as far as emmiting gases goes.  I always make the final connection at the jumping car battery ground as reommended before going to the bike to start.

Probably not any more dangerous jumping a bike if you do it right than it is to ride that bike after it's started.   

how about push starting it?

Myself I have had no problems boosting a bike to bike or to car or what have you

Quote from: mattress on January 09, 2008, 03:07:21 PM
how about push starting it?

Yep. Worst thing that will happen is you fall off the bike and it skids a little, or it just starts

You could also keep your battery indoors