I’ve been enjoying the hell out of motorcycle camping! I bought a (used!) Honda PC800 in 2023 with the intention of using it for camping. It took three years to get my ducks in a row enough to fulfil that plan.
So there I was; at a picnic table (at a campsite I’d scavenged from some other dude so I could power my CPAP) happily typing a blog post about C.S. Lewis.
“I finally did it!” I thought happily. “I’ve put modest miles on this old bike and it’s everything I’d hoped it would be.”
That’s when it hit me. There was enough tread when I bought it (the tires are obviously not original!) but I’m finally using it properly, what about now? Sure enough, the rear tire is low on tread. Not “you’ll die instantly” but “budget for a replacement soon”. C. S. Lewis would disapprove of the language I used.
I procrastinated. Later, when I had to go somewhere, I walked past the 1989 PC800 motorcycle with fading tires and hopped on my still very awesome 1999 Honda Shadow motorcycle with good tires. (Both have classic plates!) It turned over strong but a half second later it croaked and couldn’t turn over at all. Sudden battery death! Most people have never even seen old style unsealed lead acid batteries. They croak if they run out of distilled water. I don’t like them. (There’d been no hint anything was amiss until the bike died completely and it’s always on a battery maintainer.)
I considered my mostly dormant 2020 Yamaha TW200. It’s still covered in Wyoming mud. It needs basic service after the beating it took. (Nothing serious, mostly the chain is stretched like a noodle.) Also, I had highway miles to do and the Yamaha sucks at that. The PC800 has fading tires, not shot ones, so I used that. The TW200 (Honey Badger) and the dead Shadow were on the disabled list.
I went to the dealership to get a new battery. Even if I rescue the existing battery it’s approaching ultimate death. (I don’t remember how old it is but it ain’t new.) Addressing the battery on the Shadow is cheaper and faster than the tire on the PC800. It’s wise to separate financial challenges in time.
Old Hondas, in my eyes, are the apex of inspired intelligent manufacturing. The dealership is absolutely NOT climbing the mountain of awesome. (In their defense, they’re incredibly slow but OK at servicing my simple 2020 Yamaha dirtbike and will grudgingly look at my 1999 Honda. They won’t touch the 1989 Honda for sure.) I mean well and should support the only dealership around.
Honda Shadows have almost no flaws, but a few models have a battery with an odd T shape. The dealership didn’t have the right battery. They would have to order it. You know who else can order a part? Me!
Amazon has the correct unsealed lead acid battery for $100+/-. (Roughly the same cost as the dealer.) It would take at least a week! Summer is fleeting!
I went back home, pulled the battery, and grabbed some CPAP distilled water. I know I’m a shitty mechanic, so I was extra careful. I carefully put the battery on a paper plate on my bench, lest I lose one of the six cell fill caps. I carefully pulled all six caps. The battery fluid was super low. No wonder it had lost connection! I topped everything off and put back five plugs.
The sixth plug had vanished! How do they do that!
I spent half an hour looking all over my garage. It just vanished!
I took a break. I announced to Mrs. Curmudgeon that a battery without a sixth plug was not just discharged but utterly doomed. (Could I 3d print a plug?)
I sulked a bit but then thought of Edna; a character in my book. She sees not what the mundane monkeys of society see, but the true nature of all things. Because I have a sense of humor, she employs this glorious awareness as “The Inspector”; a mob specialist who checks crime scenes to detect and eliminate the very last molecule of prosecutable evidence. Do such beings exist? Probably not among thugs, but in my novel they do. If they did IRL, would you know? I wouldn’t. (I chuckle that her legitimate cover story and backup job was elementary school teacher. A criminal in touch with the universe is probably better than a lot of the stoners, morons, and pervs we foist on innocent kids in real life. Edna would teach the shit out of those little kids, and she has a special ability with grammar!)
So here’s the deal. I know there was a plug. It’s not gone, it’s unseen. If I could see what is truly there, it would be obvious to me. Starting at my garage door I walked toward my bench aiming for something like a Zen level of openness.
The missing plug was under the lip of a plastic bucket, several inches behind the table leg, and had rolled beneath a piece of scrap wood. I saw it immediately. It practically glowed.
What. The. Hell?
I invented Edna as a humorous character. It was satire. Yet, that thing happened.
Anyway, I put it on my charger.
At first maybe it was so dead it didn’t activate the charger? A few hours later I fretted maybe I was overcharging the little thing. I switched to a NOCO GENIUS1. (I have a bunch of them.) The Genuis1 is a 1 amp charger/maintainer. It’s very gentile. I plugged it in and left it overnight.
The next morning the light was still red. I guessed the battery couldn’t hold a charge. I announced to Mrs. Curmudgeon, once again, that the battery was trash.
A few hours later, the light turned green. No shit!
It might work for a day, might work for the rest of the season. Who knows?
When I went to Wyoming I installed a special NOCO GBC007 X-Connect Adapter Extension Cable on my dirt bike. I carried a NOCO Boost GB20 that goes with the cable. It’s small enough to carry but plenty to jumpstart a motorcycle or an ATV. (It’ll start cars too!) It also recharges my cell phone and SpotX. It’s also a flashlight. Very versatile! (Shame it can’t run a CPAP!)
I’d bought two more GBC007 cables and planned to put one on all of my bikes. Here’s a picture of me routing it under the removed seat of my Shadow. It’s a big honkin’ cable that can handle serious power. Properly routed, it’s nearly invisible as you ride the bike.
That cable’s plug fits directly into the GB20 for a convenient jumpstart. I can also use the same pigtail with a fused adapter (included) with the Genius 1 for mellow daily 1 amp battery maintenance.
The important part to me is that I don’t have to carry bulky alligator clips. Nor do I have to pull seats and root around accessing a motorcycle’s battery to jump a bike. In theory, you could have a very shitty, more or less dead, battery and just keep jumping it to get home. That might work even on a multi day trip. (My bikes are primitive and don’t have fuel injection or computers.)
I’m stoked to have “easy jump” cables on my dirt bike and now the Honda Shadow with it’s sketchy battery. The other will go to the PC800’s battery when I get brave enough to delve into that plastic jungle. Probably at the same time I address the tire.
I test rode the Shadow with its “sketchy” battery. It ran great. I’m sure the battery is not awesome but it passed the test and it’ll be easy to jumpstart if needed. I’ll be fine.
One note; I’m a shitty mechanic and only I belatedly learned a handy trick. Motorcycle batteries have a loose “nut” on the bottom of the terminals. Threading the screw through the wires and the terminal into that loose nut is an absolute pain in the ass. It’s super frustrating.
I cut little bits of scrap foam insulation to hold the nut so I can thread the screws. It’s like magic. In the picture below it’s the little pink things.
What a miracle! It turns a 30 minute swear-fest into an easy 5 minute task. Probably everyone but me knew that trick. You don’t know what you don’t know. I wish someone had told me 30 years ago!
One last picture. My cat demanded to be part of this post.
Also, I don’t know if Honda now is as bulletproof as Honda was in the past. (Certainly other manufacturers of “bulletproof” stuff like Volkswagen, Mercedes, and (long ago ) Jeep went from “excellent design and manufacture” to “payments with wheels”.) Fortnine explains part of why I respect the company (or at least its history).
