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uberthumper · # 2 07-12-10, 09:57

Yeah, it will be fine. When you plug them in, they do some sort of test, then a charging cycle that takes about 3 hours. After that, they just sit there monitoring the voltage and putting a bit more in if it starts to drop, which is why you can leave them connected for long periods.

So yeah, just pull the battery out of each bike once every week or two and stick it on the optimate for a few hours until the green light comes on, then put it back. This is effectively what happens to my wife's bike, which isn't being used over the winter - the optimate is permanently plugged into it, but the power to the garage is only switched on when I go to do some work out there, so it effectively gets topped up every week or two.

An Optimate, or other smart charger, might refuse to resurrect the one that's completely flat - effectively the electronics in the charger decide that it's not really a battery, or it's knackered. You can sometimes get better results by using a more crude charger first to try and get a bit of charge into it, then keeping it on the optimate.

If it's been flat for a while though, be prepared for the possibility that it is knackered and won't ever hold a charge properly again.