I hope I'm not asking a stupid question but I'm pretty sure I need to replace my battery and just want to make sure I've done everything I can before I do so. The situation I have is that my ACE is my daily driver. Last fall when it started getting cold I started having problems with the battery not having enough juice to crank. Not being able at the time to afford a new battery I picked up a Battery Tender Jr and found over the course of the winter that as long as I fully charged the battery once a week with it that everything ran fine. Then a couple weeks ago on a cold morning (6 am) the bike had a hard time firing (it turned over OK), and the bike was backfiring constantly for about a mile at which point it ran fine the rest of the day. I noticed that there was a gas smell, indicating (I think) that the engine was flooded, which to me says it wasn't getting adequate spark. Later that day I had a hard time cranking the bike over when leaving work, so I put it on the charger that night, and no more issues for a few days. Well, the same thing happened a few days later, only this time when I tried to charge the batter overnight it didn't register a full charge. Now it takes about 2 days to get it to a full charge state (according to the charger indicator). I've seen something somewhere about checking water levels in the battery but don't know what that entails and if it is possibly an issue or if I'm just trying not to spend money. Any adivce would be welcome. Also, after reading several of the other posts about batteries here I'm still confused on what the common recommendation is for replacement batteries. When I purchased my Battery Tender at a local Batteries Plus I noticed they had something that looked like the Yuasa I currently have, but somewhere I thought somebody indicated an issue with it. Since they are much closer to me (and the price is better) than the Honda dealer I'd like to find out more details if they are available. Thx...
