Can you charge the lithuim type battery with a standard Accumate/Optimate or normal lead-acid battery charger?

No you can't.


Check this thread for more info. It's long, but got loads of info:
http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=757934

And check out:
http://www.optimate1.com/lithium-starter-batteries

The SSB I have can charge through any charger.
http://www.hollyhockbatteries.com.au...-KTM300-2.html

I'll digress for mo because up until recent the 60,0000 dollar question do they work and do they work in the cold the answer is yes to both what they don't is any kind of long term storage in the that's from my experience and others I know.

As for charging hmmmmm my info tells me yes you charge them but only with an old style battery charger not a tender because if the tender goes into disulphate mode then their be kaput.

As I put in my post I left mine to stand over the winter to see how it fared and it's been good for the sake of a lithium battery tender at 50 quid or so that'll be the route I'm going because I think within a few years both the lead acid and the gel versions will be long gone.

Here we are 2 years on and its as good as the day I bought it,I have actually bought a lithium optimate charger not that it needed it but took the battery off just give it a charge when I put it back on the bike missed the wire from the PC so when I came to start it it spun the motor over for as long as it took for me to work it out!!!.

The XT has been the guinea pig for the other bikes and this year I'll change all of them over its been that good.

Do you have any spots, heated grips etc running on the bike? I read somewhere that if you do short trips or low speeds daily or have extras like I mentioned above the battery will not last.

I'd like to give a lithium battery a try but I have heated grips and led spots running and sometime a GPS.

No I don't,but on another forum I used to run a group buy with Odyssey batteries and I had guys complain because they did a 5 mile ride to work with such and they could flatten a PC680.

If you take a charge out then you need to put one in lead acid/gel/lithium no matter what.

I read an article in Motorcycle Sport and Leisure earlier last year about compairing a lithium against conventional and it was saying how a lithium will give 100% even if it's about to go belly up,I had a gel on my k1200 and it went belly up after 175 mile ride to Portsmouth we stopped at the shell garage at the docks and when I came to start it was absolutely stone dead so I have no fears with a lithium well not now anyway,no better or worse as far as dropping of a cliff is concerned.

The only thing I will say fitting a lithium was all part of shedding weight off my X,it's a fat old bus at best and that was my main reason,the fact that it works better and looks as though it will last as long as anything else is a bonus.

I guess that this is due to the high power consumption. The lithium batteries have an intelligent electronic that is balancing the charging process of the cells in the battery. A lithium battery keeps it voltage higher than a lead battery under high power consumption.

When you now use your heated grips which is a lot of power when they are in the preheat state. The voltage of the alternator will drop and must have been in the described cases too low to charge the battery. Because as soon as the alternator voltage is lower than the battery voltage, the battery wont get charged anymore and even gets discharged. Due to the fact that the engine start also needs a lot of power the battery drains every time you use it on such a short trip in winter times (plus the capacity is less in cold condition).

And in the end the circuit in the battery will protect it cells from discharging to low. So it will just stop from one moment to the other (no worries you just have to charge the battery again).

So I guess if you drive the bike from time to time more than 5 or 10 minutes it wont be a problem at all. Or you just leave the heated grips off for such a short time (when you only drive 5 minutes your hands anyway wont get cold).

I gave my work WR250R a Li battery due to the fact that, imo, this bike is under-batteried in the cold cranking amp department.

Periodically, I leave the bike unstarted for up to 2 months. Even with a fresh charge in the oem battery, the engine will fire but not run. Then it floods, and blah blah blah.

Li battery? Much higher cold cranking amps give a faster spin and instant start. Happy owner. With complete confidence, I'll give the Tenere an Li when the oem cacks it.

So far, the Li battery has endured coldish temps by our standards, say +5degC. Then it has suffered in indeterminate number of hours (always seems more than it it really is, but about 100) of +50degC or more (measured by backpack-mounted Garmin sender communicating with a 62S GPS). I should log this stuff, but due to approaching my melting point, I get the coombies. (For non Australians, this means coomby f****d).

Still a few weeks till its be on the bike 3 years and as good as ever I've had it on charge twice in that time with a lithium charger and even then only did it out of curiosity