I have quite enjoyed riding my motorcycle to work and back the past few months. It's been nice to not spend so much on gas and still get around. The other day I had come home from work and stuffed it in the garage and didn't think much else of it. I had left the key on though so overnight the battery had the chance to die on me. The next morning as I tried to fire it up I quickly realized I had left the key on all night and the battery wasn't going to do anything for me.
I'm used to older motorcycles. When a battery is dead you can roll start the thing and let the alternator do it's job and charge the battery. Also you can jump start the battery and again as the motorcycle runs it will charge the battery. Needing to get to work I attempted to roll start the beast and not being on the biggest hill in the world gave up after three attempts and half a gallon of sweat. I removed the seat and tried to locate the battery. I looked at what I thought might be the battery but in a frustrated attempted to hurry off to work I ended up stuffing it in the garage and taking the car. I figured I could figure out where the battery was and jump the thing when I got home.
After work I grabbed the jumper cables and popped the hood on my car. The battery is stuffed far enough under the seat that I couldn't clamp the lead on the battery so the best I could do was hold them there. I saw sparks and the lights came on so I knew it was getting a charge. I fired it up and the second I pulled the leads off it died. I did this several times creating sparks and smoke (The plastic around the leads were getting hot and melting).
At this point I was pretty aggravated. I pulled out the charger and hooked it up to let it charge overnight but when I plugged it in it didn't show it was pulling very many amps (again an old motorcycle will pull upwards of over 6 amps and slowly pull less and less until it's charged). When I turned the key the lights would come on and it drew some amps there. Problem was it was going to the lights and not really charging the battery. Eventually I pulled the battery all the way out and set it down to charge. It still wasn't drawing much. I started looking around on the battery and I found that for a standard charge it will pull 1.1 amps for ~5-10 hours. Alrighty then.
I let the thing charge overnight and this morning (along with our little mouse incident) I put everything back together. It fired right up without any problems. The Trips had been cleared and I had to reset the clock but other than that everything was fine. Looking around on the internet newer bikes are totally dead without the battery. You can't jump them or roll start them. No battery leaves you dead in the water. Guess I won't be leaving the lights on overnight anymore. It's nice to have a fuel injected unit and not worry about a choke, but I guess the trade off is when it's dead it's dead.
Saturday, August 30, 2014
The Mouscepade
A few years ago not long after moving into our house we had noticed that we weren't the only ones living in our house. Some mice had decided it was a good idea to move in with us. They hadn't been paying us rent so we got some exterminators to give them an eviction notice for us. It seemed to work quite well. We stuffed steel wool in the holes that they had created and called it at that.
Just this last week we noticed that a hole had been chewed in a bag. We started seeing signs of the return of the rodent. This time we decided to go with a home brewed remedy. Last time we had gotten some things before the exterminator, but nothing really seemed to catch their attention. I had caught a few mice on my mission with a good old fashion wooden trap. We got a handful of those and some of the sticky variety as well. We cleaned out the floor of the pantry and set up the traps. Top tip: Caramel doesn't seem to be a big winner with the mice. I don't think it's very potent. We ran and got a small jar of peanut butter and smeared that on the wooden traps. I thought for sure that would do the trick. I didn't think the sticky ones would do much good because there really wasn't anything to lure them to them. We have had the traps set up for days without much luck. We hadn't thought about it for a day or two.
This morning when we got up and went to look in the pantry and lo and behold we had one of the little ninjas at last. It was on one of the sticky traps and it was struggling to get loose. The trap had fallen down a step or two from where we had originally placed it. In a mad struggle to escape it probably moved around enough to move the trap and get itself stuck even more. I don't know how long the poor thing had been there. Enough that it only twitched every now and again to try and get loose. My wife was getting exited wondering what to do with the poor thing and how to put it out of its misery. She wanted to let loose the hounds and let one of the dogs at it. I've seen what he does to chew toys and leaving Mouse entrails all over the house didn't seem like the best option to me. She called her parents and they suggested drowning it. That seemed better than the hammer I was considering.
I filled up a bucket of water and as I got the trap to dunk the feller in it started squeaking in it's panic. I dropped the trap it and it was floating. I think it was submerged enough that it drowned but I got a stick and submerged it to make sure. I am hoping that there is only the one. There hasn't been a lot of evidence of a lot of them. Just maybe one or two. Hopefully there aren't anymore.
Just this last week we noticed that a hole had been chewed in a bag. We started seeing signs of the return of the rodent. This time we decided to go with a home brewed remedy. Last time we had gotten some things before the exterminator, but nothing really seemed to catch their attention. I had caught a few mice on my mission with a good old fashion wooden trap. We got a handful of those and some of the sticky variety as well. We cleaned out the floor of the pantry and set up the traps. Top tip: Caramel doesn't seem to be a big winner with the mice. I don't think it's very potent. We ran and got a small jar of peanut butter and smeared that on the wooden traps. I thought for sure that would do the trick. I didn't think the sticky ones would do much good because there really wasn't anything to lure them to them. We have had the traps set up for days without much luck. We hadn't thought about it for a day or two.
This morning when we got up and went to look in the pantry and lo and behold we had one of the little ninjas at last. It was on one of the sticky traps and it was struggling to get loose. The trap had fallen down a step or two from where we had originally placed it. In a mad struggle to escape it probably moved around enough to move the trap and get itself stuck even more. I don't know how long the poor thing had been there. Enough that it only twitched every now and again to try and get loose. My wife was getting exited wondering what to do with the poor thing and how to put it out of its misery. She wanted to let loose the hounds and let one of the dogs at it. I've seen what he does to chew toys and leaving Mouse entrails all over the house didn't seem like the best option to me. She called her parents and they suggested drowning it. That seemed better than the hammer I was considering.
I filled up a bucket of water and as I got the trap to dunk the feller in it started squeaking in it's panic. I dropped the trap it and it was floating. I think it was submerged enough that it drowned but I got a stick and submerged it to make sure. I am hoping that there is only the one. There hasn't been a lot of evidence of a lot of them. Just maybe one or two. Hopefully there aren't anymore.
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| R.I.P. Ninja Mouse #1 |
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