yeah same here.

got a new battery waiting at home but not putting it in until spring. i just use my Optimate and give it a charge before i go out on it at the weekend.

the prob is if you get in to a sticky situation off roading and you keep getting stuck and stalling it. Every time you start it you think "how many times can i do this until it wont start :) )

I normally keep mine on a optimate too but forgot to plug it in. Ten days or so and it was too flat to start.

Admittedly it's not cold here at the moment (or ever, compared with the climate that some of you legends survive in!), but I can leave my bike for a month or so and it will start. I've given up doing that, though, and leave a trickle charger hooked up if I'm away at work.
I left it for 6 weeks once, and it only just wheezed into life. But the electrics weren't happy, and it took some while before everything returned to normal.
I left my TTR250 for 4 months a few years ago, at it still started on the button. Hero. No immobiliser makes a big difference, I guess.

Optimate +1. Can be hooked up overnight for a boost, or left on all winter if necessary. It can also recover apparently dead batteries. From experience, this is true. Wouldn't be without one.

I had this problem one time me and my friends got stucked in a totally off road trail, just for dirt bikes. It was so much mud that, everytime the engine went down, one tear starts to drop from my eye. That day, the battery dont let me down, but we still had to sleep on the middle of nowhere!

Check the regulator wire plug and contact.Or regulator .:003:

I too rate the Optimate very highly and I keep most of my bikes plugged in over the winter months, so a Yuasa life is greatly extended. More recently (3 years ago) I switched to the CTEK chargers cos they have excellent connecters which you can fit to the fairing of the bike (see http://www.ctek.com/gb/en) and they also make chargers in OEM form for Yamaha (and loads of other car and bike manufacturers) and I find them excellent and I now have 4, and recently one of these even brought the battery on my van back to life!!! Your choise!!

I have a ride-on mower that uses one of those sealed lay-flat batteries. After about 5 years of neglect, it was failing to hold a charge. I was mowing for 30 minutes, stopped to open a gate etc., and it didn't have enough to start again, i.e. really dead. If it had been in a car or bike I would have replaced it months before that, but being a cheapskate ...

I hooked it up to the Optimate, more in hope than anything, and got the red/yellow lights that say 'battery f***ed'. I had been told that recovering a dead battery could take some time, so I left it like that for several days. One morning I checked it and, lo and behold, a green light. It took a whole week. I put the battery back in the mower and used it for another year until I finally bit the bullet and replaced it. That's why I rate Optimates.

(One downside is that the original Optimates used those white plastic Tamiya-type connectors between charger and pigtail, croc clips etc. This destroyed itself pretty quickly and I replaced it with something more robust. I believe the new ones come with SAE connectors (the ones where the male and female are identical) that should be much better.)

Interesting thread. My X is now experiencing her second winter, living outside under a rain cover. I haven't ridden for 8 days now because of the snow, but need to get out tomorrow. Last winter I left her out for 2 weeks in frost/snow & she started on the button. If battery is too low to start her in the morning, what is the best course of action:
1) jump start from car battery (with car NOT running), or
2) bump start in 2nd down the road? Will the FI complain??
I guess batteries have a life expectancy - cars are around 5 years or so, boat/Yacht batteries less, but what about bikes????

I've generally found (and measured) that most OE lead/acid motorcycle (and car) batteries start a sudden and rapid deterioration in their ability to retain voltage after 3 years. Obviously they last longer than that that (depending on charge-discharge cycle), but there will be a steady decline there after. Regular topping up with an Optimate or such, doesn't really do much to halt the decline, it just assists the battery in retaining its voltage - the Optimate will do more work to cover up the battery's failings. All battery conditioning devices are really just "helpers" rather than "fixers".