When Professional Monkey needed a new battery for his Harley Heritage Classic, he turned to Dennis Kirk for a recommendation. He ended up with a Drag Specialties High Performance AGM battery. In the video below, he details how the process went and the reasoning for choosing the battery that he did.
Transcript Below
A new battery. That battery’s not old but it’s crap. I bought one of those $60 Amazon specials, going “eh, I’ll keep it on a tender, it’ll be fine.”
It was fine for a month. It’s cheap but you know what cheap batteries are cheap. You’re all out there right now going, “Dude, I could have told you that.”
It’s junk. This bike wasn’t intended on being ridden that much. I thought it’d be fine. It wasn’t fine. Because what happens with a really cheap battery, they send bizarre sort of readings back to a tender or a charger. And what this one does is it tells the tender that it’s overcharged. So the tender runs the battery down to where it thinks it’s healthy and at that point it’s so weak you can’t start the bike. And I ended up breaking down and having to buy a new battery from, again, my new best friends at Dennis Kirk. Why? Because they like the channel they followed it and they commented. It’s very exciting.
What I ended up doing was buying a classic, uh, it was like 138 bucks Drag Specialties Premium battery or High Performance battery. What does it say? High Performance battery. And then actually talked to later that day my new pal at Dennis Kirk and he was like “yeah no,” he’s like “that’s, that’s the right one, that’s the one you want.”
Well, the other thing I had with the cheap battery not only did the whole battery tender thing, you know, run it down. But you think of a cold battery not starting, this one, when it gets hot, I lose juice and she won’t fire. So when I was at Daytona the day of our meet and greet when I got to the Beaver Bar, they were like yeah you gotta go park around back and I’m like I’m sorry I’m parking right here. They were like why? Cuz it ain’t gonna start now. And it didn’t. Bike was so hot battery wouldn’t turn over enough juice. Wouldn’t fire the bike. So to make a short story long, we got a new battery.
So there she is. The new battery. So part number is 2113-0012. Again, that’s a 2014 battery and this is a sealed battery. You know, you don’t have to do anything, don’t have to put water into it none of that stuff.
But these are really good. And again, my contact Dennis Kirk was like no that’s the one I would buy for my bike. And I think actually said that’s the one he runs in his bike.
Talk real quick about the lithium-ion battery thing because someone out there is saying why didn’t you buy a lithium-ion battery? Lithium-ion batteries get a bad rap and it’s probably earned. You know I’m not a fan. I didn’t buy one just now and it’s not because of price. I just don’t trust them. But one thing that it’s not as commonly known is that you cannot just hook up a regular battery tender to a lithium-ion battery. You’ll cook it. If you have, you know, the battery tender pigtail on your bike that came from the factory and you swap it out for lithium-ion battery and just hook that sucker and hook the battery tender, you’re gonna murder that battery in a pretty short period of time. So you need a dual mode charger. That’s it for that.
So new seat, new battery.
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