I the interest of fixing all the little issues that pop up on a decade+ old bike we’ll move onto the battery. I got about 7-8 years out of the original battery on this bike, but since replacing the original, the replacements last about 12-18 months until they just won’t hold a charge for any length of time.  After a conversation with an engineer at Yuasa he said it all comes down to that initial charging operation and that there’s really no way to get the same longevity of a stock factory battery with an aftermarket replacement.  Even if the replacement is the identical model.  So after going through 2-3 lead acid AGM batteries I decided to try out a lithium model and see how that holds up.

Lets see what we’re starting with.

Well that’s just about dead.  Not good considering it was on the charger until a day before stating this.  Let’s replace this with a new Noco Lithium model.

While the battery isn’t as easy to get to as most cars, it’s not too bad on the Concours.  Everything you need is behind this one body panel and frame plate.

Then you’ll be greeted with 4 6mm bolts to remove the frame plate.

At this point you just need to remove the positive wire leads and slide the battery tray out to remove the negative leads.  The battery is free at this point.

So looking at the batteries side by side you can see there is a big difference in physical size, even though the Noco has more than double the cold cranking amps of the lead acid battery.

So other than the physical size difference there is also quite a weight savings.

I could have waited to install this battery, but I really wanted to see how it behaves in cold temperatures (which is the achilles heal of lithium batteries).  I took the bike out for about a 100 mile loop and everything was working as intended.  Once it cools down some more I’ll plug in all the electric gear and see how it does.

The Noco also comes with a 5 year warranty so if it last at least that long I can say I’ll never go back to a lead acid battery. Time will tell, but I’ve got my fingers crossed that this battery is going perform pretty good over time.