Odyssey battery

78jotadave

78jotadave

Hero member
Location
Palm Desert, California. (near Palm Springs)
Well f... me the Odyssey battery I purchased in Jan 2022 as a replacement for the Odyssey battery that had served me well for the better part of 11 years is caput, done, toast, it might as well be a shit sandwich. It left me stranded 20 miles from home the bike carked it, couldn't even push start it. So I called the wife to come and rescue me after telling her to go to the shed and get the old Odyssey which I still had on trickle charge. She did both so I dropped the old battery in and although there was not enough life in the old battery to fire the triple up on the starter the missus put her back into it and it fired up with a short one pop push start and the bike ran like a champ all the way home.
Purchased through Amazon Fulfillment center, isn't everything done that way on Amazon, a 4-year warranty doesn't mean shit to Amazon. The battery failed a load test and is basically a friggin doorstop.
 
I purchased a Chev fuel pump on Amazon and it was delivered from Texas to Auckland NZ in 4 days but took another 7 days to get down to me. Freight is very reasonable compared to most other services. I use anyone to keep my old bangers on the road!
 
Pretty severe the operating conditions for the Laverda older bikes, in regards to battery expectations. Chronic undercharging a danger in oem style charging systems. That aspect has been dealt with properly to this day, notables over the decades making significant contributions, engineering effort and cash outlay. May well be the battery is an issue, though is the only outward indicator of a whole charging system issue. Given the prior battery was serviceable, the new battery could be a single point issue or failure. Branded battery these days could be anything, direct ascendancy past to present is anything but assured. Yaesu was my preferred battery in the day, failure after failure had me sworn off, remains to this day.

Should the battery be lower price range, there is a reason for that, premium product is all internals, how can you measure that on a shop shelf or delivery van outside.... Jotadave, what price on the stranded from home rescue... well you know, add that to the price of a battery when shopping, no insult intended. Would imagine the Prysmatic ( sp? ) product was not cheap, ok in the early days then failures ( field ) starting becoming more pronounced. Deka another favourite, also a good early product, then problems started to appear. With any early unexpected battery failure a confirmation of charging system being as designed included in the battery change over, bit obvious, say it all the same.

Been discussed prior, batteries of choice, lower price range, seem to be the best choice from experience here, over many years. Trade off, replace the battery at say every 24 months or so. The notion of 7 year batteries may be possible, charging system has to be 100% during that time, and you may be lucky, an element also... not sure this helps directly, more a philosophy in narrative. j.
 
Dave,

Are you sure you have a real Odyssey battery? There are counterfeit ones out there just like many other products. I have also heard reports or real Odyssey batteries prematurely failing that are not made in the USA. I have four bikes with the Odyssey PC680 and some are almost 10 years old. They are always kept on a battery tender when not being ridden.

I have never bought a Odyssey from Amazon. I buy them local to me and can sometimes find them cheaper than the Amazon price.
 
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Yep, my recent battery experiences are hugely variable, in terms of them all being worse than the good-old-days. Varying from crap to chronic. Not specifically Odyssey - but I do suspect a common root cause -> made in (or materials from) China.
 
I've no problem with my batteries, bought on the web. Including an Odyssey in my triple.
And I hardly ever trickle charge them.

Paul
 
Battery update, following several emails to Amazon, the Odyssey rep contacted me directly and asked me to provide a few extra details and photos of the barcodes. So the battery is being sent off to Odyssey and hopefully a new one in return (pro-rated cost as per normal policy). Amazon provided a free shipping label.
As I stated in my original post the Odyssey had lasted 11 years before it finally gave it up(always on a low trickle charge) but the current battery gave in after just 10 months, once again always on a (smart) low trickle charge.
One thing of note, not technical, 10 months ago the battery cost me $132 today the same battery is $170+
The failed battery was an Odyssey, not a knock off and it is made in the USA.
 
Sounds like rubbish service from Amazon. They’ve just handed it over to odyssey to sort out, despite them being the seller and making a margin. Pisses me off when retailers don’t honour their responsibilities.
Well done to Odyssey for picking up the ball, but they shouldn’t need to deal with individual customers.
 
.....the failed battery, guessometer from afar, inter cell to cell electrode connection failure, somewhat unusual as a fracture would have a minimal gap and would/could randomly re-establish some form of electrical conductivity, ie neutral light, hit starter button, battery terminal voltage collapses to zero, and or fumes internally in the battery. Not convinced a constant "trickle" charge is a good thing, at great risk of topic avalanche.... free advice, worth every cent paid for it....j
 
iis_iis said:
.....the failed battery, guessometer from afar, inter cell to cell electrode connection failure, somewhat unusual as a fracture would have a minimal gap and would/could randomly re-establish some form of electrical conductivity, ie neutral light, hit starter button, battery terminal voltage collapses to zero, and or fumes internally in the battery. Not convinced a constant "trickle" charge is a good thing, at great risk of topic avalanche.... free advice, worth every cent paid for it....j
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The wet-cell lead acid batteries (typically up to 2000Ah) used in telephone exchanges were kept on a float charge, and expected to last 20 years. That was my experience from 40 years ago, technology may have moved on!
cheers,
bazzee
 
It does seem pretty random these days. I'm using mostly SSB batteries these days and have not had a dud yet but have heard of others who have. I used to use Odyssey but like Vince found they just became too expensive. The old ones would last ~15 years easy, but the new ones while being phenominally more expensive do not seem to last. I've more recently used both Deka and Motobatt and had failures/short life with both, then moved to SSB. At least they are cheap enough to not be too offended if they don't last all that long.
 
iis_iis said:
the failed battery, guessometer from afar, inter cell to cell electrode connection failure, somewhat unusual as a fracture would have a minimal gap and would/could randomly re-establish some form of electrical conductivity, ie neutral light, hit starter button, battery terminal voltage collapses to zero, and or fumes internally in the battery.
Click to expand...
That is a spot-on guess from afar, John well done. Neutral light on hit the starter, and the battery dropped to zero voltage, so happy I saved the old, old one as I could at least push start it to get the bike running and get it home.
I will report back on how the warranty claim pans out,.

Cheers Dave
 
bazzee said:
The wet-cell lead acid batteries (typically up to 2000Ah) used in telephone exchanges were kept on a float charge, and expected to last 20 years. That was my experience from 40 years ago, technology may have moved on!
cheers,
bazzee
Click to expand...
Well we both know Bazzee, the floated battery bank, original Plante' cells, almost pure lead plates, in exchanges of my era, foreaux ( spelling eludes me ) were the main stay for exchange secondary batteries ( Dunlop and Exide was it? ) Plate chemistry the advance in performance and durability. The exchange glass ( and it was glass ) batteries had significant clearance from plates to bottom of glass container. You could see the detached plate material gather on the bottom of the cells, a top filter system where water was added to the battery solution, soldered battery to battery lead bar links. Something to see in the day, nominal float was in the range of 2,25v per cell at 20C, SG at some 1265. All from memory... accuracy not a certain aspect.

Back to modern battery in the bikes, it is a floated system for much of the ride time, when at home the "tenders" are what concerns me, the actual charge regime map, for want of better words, mostly sealed system or non return valve construct, evaporation of water can leave the battery vulnerable to electrolyte depletion. j
 
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