made a late night online purchase of a cheap battery tester from Amazon a few nights ago. It arrived and I thought I'd test my 20 month old battery from my Nighthawk that was sitting out of the bike, fully charged. I fully expected it to test OK but when I ran the test it said...REPLACE! Noooo!
I believe the 'replace' recommendation comes from the SOH (state of health) reading. It looks like it is the % of available CCA vs the new rating. My battery is 250 CCA, test showed 131 available CCA, or 52% of max. Quick online search shows a battery below 75% SOH should be replaced. Crap.
The Caltric battery was $49 and lasted less than 2 years. Guess I'll buy another one for the riding season. Kind of scared to test my other bike and car batteries, for fear of what I may find!
