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Dead Battery?

By lem at 11:25 pm on September 27, 2006 | 6 Comments

I’ve noticed for the past few weeks that the electric starter on my Vespa LX 150 has been a little sluggish. I had to hold the button longer to get the engine to kick over properly. While I didn’t consider this to be normal behavior, I wasn’t sure if it was something worth making the drive out to the Vespa service center for.

And then tonight, my girlfriend and I were downtown picking up dinner at Lindy’s with a plan of taking it home to eat. When I went to start the Vespa, I noticed the headlight was considerably dimmer, and the starter was barely cranking. Immediately I recognized the problem: a nearly dead battery.

My girlfriend is an AAA member, and after waiting for over two hours for them to show up we decided to try kick starting the Vespa. When I first bought it, I read the instruction manual cover to cover (well, at least the English portions) and the only part about kick starting said something about why it was a bad idea. But I figured getting stranded downtown DC at 11 PM on a weeknight couldn’t be much of a better option. After several attempts, we figured out how to get the kick start to work properly and we were off.

I know that like cars, motorcycle batteries charge themselves while the engine is running. We drove around for a while and parked back at home. My hope is there will be enough charge to get the Vespa started in the morning. We’ll see how it goes in a few hours!

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