Looking for a smaller battery!

[GSJim]

Here's another Motobatt question for the gurus. My GS650G uses a Yuasa YB14L-A2. The Motobatt equivalent is the MBTX14AU. Can I charge the Motobatt with a Yuasa SmartShot 900 Battery Charger/Maintainer? It's a 900 mA wall wart charger.It supposedly switches from charge to float at 14.4 V whereas the Motobatt wants 14.8 to 15 V for a full charge. Hmm, maybe I just answered my own question.

I hate to buy another charger, but I also don't want to buy another Yuasa battery

Jim

[Grimly]

I've never had any problems maintaining my Mototbatts so far with ordinary battery maintainers.
However, there is a position on them which seems to imply that it's suitable for AGMs. The instructions are vague.
Normally I just clip them on and leave them to it, with no downside so far.
I learned the hard way, with conventional lead-acid batteries, not to leave them on continuous maintained charge, so I'm fairly careful to only top up the AGMs every few weeks or couple of months for a few days max. If I remember to do it, I sometimes flip the charger to the supposed AGM position during that.

[bwringer]

It'll be fine; just throw the maintainer/charger on for a few hours once a month or so.

Whichever maintainer you're using, it's really much better to only use them sporadically rather than leaving them hooked up all the time.

In theory, leaving a "smart" maintainer (NOT a trickle charger) hooked up all the time is just fine. And it is fine, if nothing ever goes wrong.

In practice, you're placing a tremendous amount of trust, perhaps your very life, in a hunk of very, very cheap Chinese electronics. Yes, even "that" expensive brand uses the exact same ha'penny charging chip and all the capacitors, resistors, etc. are sourced from the lowest bidder and slapped together at warp speed on the other side of the globe. If one tiny little thing in that mass of penny pinching value engineering goes wrong, there goes your battery, maybe your motorcycle, and perhaps your house or even you.