How to Change a Motorcycle Battery

Video Transcript

"I'm Brian Bussemey, from Cowboy Harley Davidson of Austin. We will be replacing a motorcycle battery. The battery is under the seat on these models. We have to remove the seat mounting screws. Careful! Don't drop them on the paint. Okay, we have our seat mounting screws out. Most seats have a mount tongue in the front that we have to pull back, and we need to get the seat strap off of the bike as well. Okay, we have the seat off. This is the battery. Whenever we're removing a battery we always disconnect the negative terminal first. Take the bolt out. Hold our terminal and battery cable out of the way. Now, we want to remove our positive battery terminal. Move your bolt. Pull the cable up, out of the way. Able to lift this cover up and out of the place, and then grab our battery. The battery is kind of heavy and big. There is our motorcycle battery out. Going back in, we simply lower the battery. Now, when installing a battery, we always connect the positive cable first. We disconnected the negative first, removing. We attach the positive first, putting it back in. This keeps sparks from occurring. We want to install our battery bolt. We want to hold our cable; keep it from rotating while we're tightening this bolt. This bolt needs to be tight but not overtightened. We need to tuck our battery protector back over the terminal. Now, we need to attach our negative battery cable; put our bolt in. You'll get a little bit of a spark. We want to tighten our negative terminal. We need to put our electrical cover back in place, verify that our cables are tight. The seat has to go through this grab strap through the middle of the seat. We have a front tongue. This metal tongue has to go in the frame on the front of the seat. Drop the front of the seat under, and that metal tongue will go into the frame holding the front of the seat. It won't come up now. Now, we need to locate the back of the seat. Want to install the mounting nuts on the back of the seat and tighten them. We need to turn the ignition switch on and verify that we have power; motorcycle will start. I'm Brian Bussemey, from Cowboy Harley Davidson of Austin. This is how we replace a motorcycle battery."