Motor Scooters: Batteries

Keeping Your Motorscooter Battery Healthy

The battery in a motorscooter is unlike the one in car. It has relatively little capacity, is constantly drained by alarms and headlights, and does not charge as readily as a car battery does.

The Problem

A motorscooter battery may lose significant charge if the scooter has not been run for a week or two, and it usually takes more than a short run to charge it. One tends to see dead scooter batteries in winter when scooting is at a minimum. Also, Chinese scooter batteries are clearly inferior, but domestic ones are not much better. The always-on headlights, together with the on-by-default alarm systems on most scooters (See Chinese Scooter Alarms) both contribute quickly to dead scooter batteries.

The Solution

Keep your battery charge up, with a charger if necessary! Of course, it is usually possible to kick start your machine, but, particularly if the plug gets wet, it can take a good bit of fast cranking to get it going again and the kick starter can't seem to do the job (kick starting can also be painful, depending on the design. See Motorscooter Kick Starters.). You have to ride them very consistently to keep the battery up, so a trickle charger is almost essential equipment for a scooterist who does not ride on a daily basis.

Watch Out, don't jump it!

If your scooter won't turn over with the electric starter, a jump-start is not necessarily advisable. Even with the car engine off, a jump from a car battery can overpower the scooter electrical system, blowing fuses or worse (I've done it. The voltage regulator blew.). Keeping a fully charged battery is a much better solution.