Alkaline Battery vs Lead Acid Battery

[PHIRONMAN]

I have a 1985 Goldwing Aspencade GL1200. It had a Lead Acid (wet cell) 240 cold cranking amp battery, and I replaced it with a Alkaline (sealed cell) 360 cold cranking amp battery. Within 120 miles the wiring and cyliniod next to the battery caught on fire. I'm looking to see why. Is the charging system compatible or do I have another issue? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Viking]

Do you mean an AGM, or a Lithium Ion? AGM should be fine but Lithium Ion have been known to catch fire. Was the fire caused by the battery burning, or was the battery still fine? If so, then you have other problems that are not the battery.

[PHIRONMAN]

After spending some time investigating the burnt area, I found some loose connections, and a broken wire on the starter relay.

[thrasherg]

It does sound like you had a poor contact, which would cause a high resistance, leading to a lot of heat being generated in the area of the poor contact when starting the engine and whilst driving. This could have caused the fire. Sounds like you need to clean all contact surfaces and tighten your connections, I hope the fire didn't do too much damage to the wiring or the bike.

Gary

[CrystalPistol]

After spending some time investigating the burnt area, I found some loose connections, and a broken wire on the starter relay.

Any defective (poor) connection creates resistance and resistance means heat and higher current loads mean higher heat temps .... and when hot enough, stuff burns. Higher amp rated batteries don't push higher amps, they just have the capacity to supply more amps when the load demands them.

[AZgl1800]

^^^^^

This is the answer.

Before you installed the new battery, there was not enough battery capacity to support "creating a bad situation", or fire as it happened this time.

The new AGM battery ( assuming that is actually what you bought ) holds a higher cell terminal voltage, and will supply a LOT of amps if called for. The 360 CCA battery can put out pretty close to 500 amps if it gets shorted.... and that will melt wires in a flash.

Each spring, we should all inspect our wiring harnesses and verify that the connections are tight and snug.

especially the heavy gauge wiring, like on the battery terminals. The battery terminals are lead based, and relatively soft. As such, they will depress away from the terminals and get loose. Looseness then creates a higher resistance connection, and with high current, that creates heat.

It is a vicious circle and will only get worse if not fixed.