slowly . Bugger , a flat battery . It looked like the 60 / 55W headlight , which can ’ t be turned off , had drained the battery to the point it wouldn ’ t start . Thankfully , between the two of us we managed to bump-start it on the short slope into the river . A few minutes of the engine running saw it able to start once more . This was the first time it had happened , so I thought it was a one-off ... but no , the issue has reared its ugly head on multiple occasions since . It ’ s not just when leaving the ignition switch on either , I ’ ve had it not start after being left standing for only a week . The battery is the original fitment Yuasa - which is a high quality Japanese unit - and it ’ s two years old with a lot of stopping and starting , so it ’ s not completely unexpected . So , I ’ ve ordered a new battery which should hopefully sort the problem .
A short while after this , where the river became walk-the-bike-rocky and slippery , the GasGas threw a fit and demanded a bump start
Photo : Josh Martin
to attach .
JUMP START With some of the remote places the GasGas can get me into , I ’ m sure I ’ ll not always be able to bump it , so as an insurance policy I ’ ve bought Battery Tender ’ s 1000A Jump Starter . Battery Tender rates it for starting engines up to V8 - both petrol and diesel - with as many as 30 jump-starts on one charge , so I figured it should smash it out of the park for starting a bike . I ’ ve used it a couple of times so far - three or four times on the GasGas and once on my old BMW R80GS . Each time the Jump Starter has fired the bike up straight away and only taken a couple of percent out of the battery pack ( from 100 % to 96 % on the last GasGas jump-start ). It ’ s small and very portable - not much bigger than any normal battery bank . It ’ s small enough to easily slip into my riding pack , so I take it on each ride with me . Being designed for cars , the battery clips are a little on the large side , so if there ’ s not much room around the battery terminals it could be fiddly
It charges quickly via the supplied USB-C cable ( 15W ) or MicroUSB ( 10W ), has a builtin light and doubles as an 8000mAh battery bank for a phone / GPS etc ( with outputs for USB-C 15W and USB-A 12W wired charging and 10W Qi wireless charging ). I normally carry a battery pack for electronics anyway , so that ’ s something I can drop from my pack to free up some space . Even when I fit the new battery to the bike , I ’ ll be carrying the Battery Tender - I really do like knowing that I ’ ve got battery backup for the electric start .
Product : Battery Tender 1000A Jump Starter Price : $ 249 More info : eurobike . co . nz
54 KIWI RIDER