Best Motorcycle Battery? Lead-Acid v. AGM v. Gel v. Lithium

Building an 85 CB450SC cafe racer, with a rear monoshock conversion. I went with an antigravity lithium ion battery for it. Its tiny size makes it easy to hide somewhere.

I notice a lot of complaints about retrofitted LiFePo4 bike batteries. LiFePo4 cells get permanently damaged if discharged below 2.5v per cell. They are also less tolerant of overcharging. For a bullet proof battery an LTO pack might do well if space is available.

Interesting video. Thanks a lot for the work done !
I am however not convinced about the suicide mission when the time for complete discharging is checked.
Lithium may discharge itself quicker, but from what I know, lithium should have less irreversible damage.
compared to Lead acid battery that will have irreversible damage, or even be dead dead.

I'll never fit another Lithium battery to any bike ever again, sure they save a pound or two in weight, but the fire risk is way too high, having had one literally expand and wedge itself in the bike and come very close to exploding it's a chance I'm not willing to take. If you're worried about the weight, you'd do better to lose those two pounds off your waistline. AGM for me, GEL second.
ps. Loved the clip of the "Play it safe" advert from HEC Tasmania. 👍

I bought a 2006 Kawa KLX250 in 2014 or early 2015 that had a Shorai Lithium in it. Battery had been in it about a year. Used the bike to teach my daughter to ride and then nearly ignored it for the rest of the time I had the POS. Sold the bike in 2022 with the SAME battery in it and it would still crank like mad. Sold me on the things.

My 2006 Yamaha FZ6 got one this spring. Not going back.

I use cheap ($6) Harbor Freight float chargers on my bikes. They use about $10 of electricity/year and allow me to use cheap batteries that last 4 or 5 years, even on my 1290SAS which is notorious for eating them.

Probably gonna try lithium next time which is right around the corner next spring. Seems like my lead acid original battery only lasted three and a half years.

Lead acid AGM in jail are essentially the same thing they're all lead acid batteries so just pull them all together they're all shit no matter which way you look at it I'm surprised you didn't have a Cobalt battery in your lineup there they suck too if it ain't one of the variants of lithium batteries it ain't worth two cents

So if you have a lithium battery in a quad that's parked outside and it's -10F, is it going to destroy the battery once you start the bike?

...like in puberty some drops is normal... Brilliant!

Really wanted to giveLiFePo4 batteries a try but I've been reading around solar and boat owners the LiFePo4 batteries can fvck up your charging system.

I switched to Li because I became fed-up with the short life of the aftermarket lead-acid batteries. My last Yuasa lasted just three years. The Li is currently on 6.

how about using a Jump Starter Power Pack, as a motorcycle battery ?

Great presentation … does the new battery fit tight enough, being a bit smaller … just wondered if it might rattle a bit ?

Now if you compare an actual 9AH lithium iron phostpate to the lead acids, then its a no competition. Also, he forgot to mention that lead acid has a lifespan of 300-500 charge cycles, lithium iron phosphate has about 3000 cycle, and might outlive the actual bike.

You know it's Canadian when the graphs come out. Look at this grappphhh

Lithium can be drained to 0%

And now agm is like 120$

What about longevity versus extrene heat? I cant get more than 5 seasons out of a motorcycle battery here in Ohoenix, AZ

A BMS in a quality li-ion battery won't allow it to discharge far enough to fully die. It will be likeliest to recharge and, unlike the others, charge back up and provide the same power as new.

what if you tested an actual 9Ah Li battery ? It would be expensive but no comparison to a lead battery . The question is if it can survive the bike's charging cirquits....

Fancy name Youasa last me 8 years with poor maintenance.
Say whatever you want, Youasa is worth the double price.

Got a lithium battery and suitable alternator and voltage regulator for it on my '72 Norton Commando. And I've never had a problem starting it. It takes two kicks to turn over when it's cold and you have to get a charge from the carburetor down the intake runners. It starts with about half a kick when it's warm.

What's a starter motor?

My 125cc Bullit Hero came with a Lithium battery, and its a mess. It loses charge with time quite fast and is pretty picky about
maintenance charge voltages. My Honda SH moped from 1986 has a conventional old battery, and you can start it up after
6 months in the snow in winter. By then the LI battery is brain dead, will be replaced by a conventional battery.

You should redo this with a lithium battery that’s a similar physical size as the rest of the dinosaurs, as that’s what nearly everyone does, replace fla with a lithium that’s as large as the box will fit.

Love this channel, but it seems ignorant and irresponsible to even suggest lithium-ion time bombs...ask any drone or Tesla owner.

Do they not make higher capacity li-ion? This didn't really help a beginner like me as I'm not sure if I should be worried that the li-ion doesn't have much capacity or is it fine? Only go li-ion if I can get a similar capacity as what the bike came with?

NOCO 5 year warranty....

With NOCO I fit a 14 series into a 9 series hole.
with a claimed 500 CCA.

NOCO chargers and batteries could use a look now days.

hey @fortnine can you revist this? Batteries/ energy storage is such an interesting technologies. Im sure they are being innovated upon as we speak

uhhhh my gel battery was like, $30, they're going for $40 now. just btw o.O

The Li Shorai battery for my bike is $330 vs BikeMaster's gel one for <$100. Hard to justify.

Weight and storage were my two main points of contention. As someone who rides invariably on low power machines, it's good to cut the weight and have something that'll store for when I decide to ride.

AKI BASAH SUPREMACYYY YEAAAHHHH ✊🏼✊🏼✊🏼

the Honda dealer in regina tried selling me a glass mat battery for 280 lol fucking jokers

That lithium rating should be straight up illegal. Total bullshit.

I wish you had tested the Li-ion after it had stood for the 2 months, you can pretty much accurately tell the state of charge of lead-acid by terminal voltage, but li-ion will keeps its terminal voltage until it is almost depleted. This is the reason that equipment that uses li-ion have 'coulomb counting' circuitry - the terminal voltage of Li-ion means little, so the only real way to know state of charge is to measure the amps going in and measuring the amps going out.... it actually damages li-ion to keep them fully charged - they are stored at 45% charge to ensure shelf life, and keeping them over 80% is damaging, on the other hand lead-acid love to be kept fully charged... I think for motorbikes AGM are the sweet spot, for cost vs performance and service life....

this channel is so cool

The one problem is he did skim over the expected life in how many years and the expected life in total cycles that the battery is expected to do. And basically, if you're not doing discharge stuff and you live somewhere where it's warm and you're not going to be writing when it's freezing out, you probably should get the lithium battery because the flooded blood acid is the one that's going to last you the least longest and need to be replaced the soonest. The AGM is actually going to outlast the gel battery most likely, but they're going to last about the same time. All of those batteries are going to need replaced in 5 years. The lead acid type batteries and the lithium battery will last you more like 10 years, especially if you're only using it to start your bike, maybe even longer, assuming you live somewhere where it's warm. Even if you're writing all your round, it's still going to last you the longest. Plus, if you are doing discharge stuff, it's so small that you could buy multiple lithium batteries and if you made a custom battery compartment considering the size of the lithium batteries, you could fit four of those lithium batteries in there. Actually giving you an extra 30% total capacity giving you 12 total amp hours instead of nine total amp hours. But then again you would have to buy four batteries. It bake a custom battery adapter for your box to actually get that usable capacity out of them, but you could still easily without adaptations to your battery box. Make some simple battery connection leads that could parallel two batteries to make them six amp hours to give you some discharge ability from the lithiums for slightly more than twice. The money of one of those lead acid type batteries and I include the gel cell battery in that as well.

Lithium is an expensive pain in the ass in the cold.. Give me lead any day.

This makes me think the best answer is to wire TWO of those little lithium batteries in parallel or just one physically larger example. Should get you similar or greater capacity versus the lead acids while still saving a lot of weight.

The lithium must have special charger why would they not need to use a different one on the motorcycle ?

Someone needs to mention phantom current consumption while your battery is still connected to the terminals on your bike. Harley Davidson's are notorious for this, so you should keep them at all times on a trickle charge when not in use.

AGM battery 🔋 at least 5 years old now, no problems

Lithium iron phosphate battery actually don't burn. They will melt and smolder into a huge mess.

My half full lithium won't crank the 125cc engine...
And a full one will only crank it like 3 times until it's voltage is too low...
That's what you get for 11.1V rated Voltage instead of 12V.
Sorely disappointed.

Lordy! Where did you find that HEC clip at the end from? Stunned Tasmanian.

I learned more about vehicle batteries than anyones ever taught me before

For my own ability to sleep at night, consider not wearing a metal ring when tinking against metal battery terminals?