Re: Parking lights - how long should the battery last?

["Robert B. Hadden" <kbhadden@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Cees,  My guess would be that you don't want to leave the parking 
lights on for that amount of time.  Particularly in cold weather.  My 
own guess would have been a half hour or so to insure you still had 
enough juice to start.  But I have never used the parking lights to 
offer a real world answer.

My 98 RS battery was original when I traded in the bike last year.  
Still worked great.  There is a huge variability in battery life, but I 
don't think what happened here says you need a new battery.

Bob Hadden '05R12GS, '62R27

On Feb 3, 2006, at 4:39 AM, Cees De Groot wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Last week I had to - ouch - ask a cager to help me start my bike. I
> left it in the parking lot at a customer's site in the morning with
> the parking lights on and when I came back there wasn't enough juice
> left in the battery to start the bike.
>
> My bad, but I would expect that the parking lights would take longer
> to drain the battery. I just rode ~50 miles so I would expect the
> battery to be fully charged when I parked the bike. It was cold-ish,
> around freezing point, and I left the bike for around 8 hours.
>
> Is it a signal that I have to start thinking about a new battery (I
> guess that this is the original one from '99) or should I just be more
> careful?
>
> TIA,
>
> Cees

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