How long are you guys getting on battery standby life with the ignition off & the clock working ?
I was a bit disappointed to find the battery down to 8volts today 7 days after being left following a 700mile weekend. I thought I remembered it lasting longer than that.
Battery is an 18month old Odyssey btw.

Robbie

Hi Robbie,

the clock will drain the battery very rapidly. the strange thing is that some bikes ar not suffering this problem. mine did suffer the problem as well. within a week the battery was dead.
I cured it by pulling the orange lead going in to the dash. this stops the clock from running. lights will work. Now I can leaf my bike for weeks and she will start happily.

Bertus

if you want to temporarily disable the clock (while bike not in use) remove 2nd fuse from R/H side.

one of the problems may also be that gel or dry batteries require a different charging curve/system so when used on a bike or car they don`t fully load and need to be hooked up to an external charger once in a while.

I use a Varta AGM battery, which has a higher CCA rating over gel or dry battery's.
these battery's are a little more expensive, but worthed IMO
I'm very happy with it, and doesn't need additional charching. well. in the winter I hook it up to a charger.

Bertus

Degradation for a wet battery is circa 1% of charge per day so depending on frequency of runs then you may have a pretty low starting point ! AGMs are much better - circa .2% per day
Also don't forget there really isn't much head room on our 400W charging systems to actually charge the battery - I think normal running is circa 280W and the 55W for headlight if you ride headlight on all the time (no option in the US?) so that only leaves about 65W capacity.
Now take into account shonk italian electrics and drop that max 10% to allow for it.

That gives you a capacity of about 25W without ever touching the brake !

Well here's a funny thing.

Hooked up the Optimate & disconnected the earth lead. A few days later the battery reads 12.9 volts on my cheapo meter so I switch off the charger & wander off. Today I hooked the earth lead back up, checked the voltage & it's as flat as a pancake again despite the earth lead being off.
The Optimate was still hooked up to the bike although unplugged from the mains supply.

So either :-

The battery is duff (but is an 18month old Odyssey)
The live lead managed to flatten the battery by itself.
The Optimate managed to allow current to "reverse flow" & flatten the battery.

So it's back on charge with the 25amp fuse pulled and then I'm going to completely disconnect the Optimate & monitor things.
Odd eh ?

Just to draw this thing to a close it turns out my expensive Odyssey battery had died. It was sent back to the seller for testing & although it would take & hold a charge it couldn't output enough power to start a bike.
Unfortunately buried in the Odyssey guarantee small print is a specific exclusion if the battery is left connected to a steady small drain such as the analogue clock on a 907. They take on a "memory" & will hold a charge for less & less time even if regularly charged back up. The supplier was most apologetic & sold me another battery at cost. They supply parts for BMWs & found the same issues with the old VDO clocks on boxers but not the digital ones on later models.
So now I'm pulling the fuse after runs.

Suppose I could rewire the clock feed through the switched side of the ignition since I'll be readjusting the clock every ride anyway from now on.

that's why I disconnected the clock and won't put in any effort in it anymore. the non running clock doesn't bother my.
you can rewire the clock and place it behind the ignition switch. this avoids the battery drain.

Bertus

Finally got around to rewiring my clock today. I'd bought a little mini-switch from Maplins which I was going to mount on the dash panel opposite the trip knob but decided to rejig the wiring under the seat instead. Quite glad I did as the 4 (yes four !) green & black wires jumped straight out of the connector blade in the block. I wasn't keen on forcing them all back into a crimp connector so I used an ugly screw block with a bridging wire. Snipped the orange feed wire to the clock from the always live terminal & added it to my green / black wires in the screw block. Then added a single length of heavier gauge wire into a new crimp blade which I reinserted into the connector block. Took the opportunity to clean up the other terminals too.
So now I'll have to readjust the clock every time I start up but at least my expensive Odyssey battery should survive.

Many early model bikes have regulator / battery draining issues or similar.A simple remedy on the Paso,is to place a battery isolator switch between the battery box and fuel tank,on the battery earth lead.this doubles as a kill switch and is easily accessed by lifting the seat. J.