Check out this garbage YUASA battery

I don't know why YUASA has this big rep. I bought one of their batteries less than 2 years ago for my 81 650 Maxim. Okay, I know the metal used for the connectors is some kind of soft alloy but this is ridiculous. These pics are the result of normal use. No abuse or twisting with pliers or beating with hammers. I think I only had it disconnected twice during that time to hook it up to the floater/charger for the winters. It's as if the current has eaten away at the connectors. They just slowly crumbled and fell apart, with the Negative one finally falling off. All for $80. You can see the operative factor at the bottom of the battery's body, reading; "Made in Taiwan".
Real crap. Of course the warranty's long finished. I've had better luck with those $50 dollar Interstate Cycletron bike batteries you get at NAPA. I got one for my 83 XJ900 and its been mint.
In the one picture you can see where the Negative connector has come off. The broken piece is sitting on top of the battery.
In the other pic you can see the bust off piece in my hand.
What a joke. Notice the first thing on the list on the work bench next to the battery? Yeah, exactly.

 

We get the YUASA brand battery's here in Australia as well, I actually have one in my XJ600 atm and i was just writing in another forum topic that im having possible battery problems as well and my battery is only 6 months old.
Dont know for sure if it is a battery problem but from ur experiences im not gonna be surprised if it is.

 

are those the original terminals ? the pos one looks soldered on
Galvanic corrosion, what did the wire teminal look like
a little grease on there might help the next one

 

Yeah, those are the original terminals, nothing soldered or welded on. I put terminal grease on them when I bought the thing and every time I reinstalled the battery for the riding season but it clearly didn't help. The terminals just seemed to corrode away, becoming very thin and a chunk of the negative terminal eventually just broke off. The cables coming off the bike look fine, they weren't affected. I've seen probably a couple hundred bike batteries in my life and I've never seen something like this. Maybe it's just a bad one but you'd like a little quality control for your 80 bucks.

 

Hmm, any chance your wiring terminals were replaced ? If
so what material are they made of? I've seen some pretty
nasty results from galvanic corrosion on boats.

http://www.boatus.com/seaworthy/galvanic/default.asp

http://www.engr.sjsu.edu/sbates/images/ ... rosion.doc.


Your electrolyte is low, looks like over charging.

 

I have had numerous yuasa batterys and no problems. As a matter of fact I have never ran into any issues like that one. It looks to me like galvanic corrosion just like paulj said. I would recommend replacing your end terminals.

 

Why don't you send that picture to the manufacturer, it might shame them into a bit of compo, tell them you will post it on u tube or whatever.

 

It looks almost melted to me, do you have a short somewhere or a bad earth maybe?

 

Looking closely at the pix, there are what looks like marks from a
star washer on the positive terminal and the surviving hole looks
to be "spread" a bit. On the broken off terminal , it looks as if it
was over torqued compressing the soft lead. If a stainless star
washer was used between the tinned copper wire terminal and
the lead battery terminal, you could get corrosion. This could
be pretty severe if the bike were in a salt air environment.

---

An aluminum boat owners worst nightmare, a copper penny in the bilge!

 

None of the above. Stock terminals on the bike, no bad connections. The bolts connecting the terminals to the bike leads came with the battery and were torqued to the recommended specs of 4.1 NMs or 3 ft/lbs of torque. And I used dielectric grease on the connections.
The strange part is the bike ran just fine on the battery until the neg terminal finally broke off. There was never any problem during starting or running. I've sent the pics to YUASA with a message asking them their opinion. I'd like to know if its something I'm doing so I don't keep doing it. Although, I've followed the same procedure on every other bike I've ever owned and never had any battery issues.

 

Welll.. The terminals ARE lead. just like on every other Battery.
Yuasa has Always been a premium brand.
Quality, in the past at least, has been v good. It's possible you got a 'bad one' or you messed it up all by yourself. Those look like they've been attacked with a Vise grip.
Talk to Yuasa, they might prove helpfull.

 

I'll repeat - no vice grips, no hammers, no pliers, no torture of any kind. The battery's been out of the bike twice in 2 years to go on the floater/charger for the winter.
Anyway, I wrote YUASA so I guess we'll see if they get back.