Below Is A Video On How To Replace A Battery In A Suzuki DRZ400
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Today we will be showing you how to replace or upgrade your battery in your Suzuki DRZ. We choose the Bike Master Lithium Ion battery. This is an upgrade over the factory battery. While we are replacing the battery we’re going to also install the quick disconnect leads for a battery tender. That way when the bike is not in use, or stored for a long period of time like throughout the winter we can connect the battery tender and it will keep the battery at full charge. That way the cells don’t freeze and you don’t damage the battery. So it’s going to cause your battery to last a long longer, if you’re using a battery tender.
Now if you don’t have one and planning on buying one, you should because they work great. But make sure you buy dual port one, so you can charge two things. A lot of people end up buying just the single one thing, and they’ll have their street bike or something they only use only during the summer to charge. Then they like it so much because it does what it’s supposed to, keep the battery from freezing and makes it last a lot longer. That they end up having to buy another one, or upgrade to the dual port. There’s always going to be two things that you want to charge outside, at least two. You got the street bike; you got your lawn mower battery that you don’t mow obviously in the winter, so you will need to bring that battery in. A car you don’t drive in the winter, so there’s multiple things to use it for. So buy a dual port and save yourself a little bit of hassle, of having to go out and buy another one or upgrade later if you only y the single charging version. So I’ll move the camera a little bit closer to the box, that way you can get the part number off it.
We’ll open it up and then we’ll get started on replacing the battery. So it’s the BikeMaster Lithium ION battery, the ultra-high crank amps, light weight. A third of the weight of the battery that’s currently in your bike and comes with a 2 year warranty. Part number is DLFP7B-BS. It comes with different size hardware depending on what style cable ends you have. it’s kind of a universal upgrade for a battery. It’s got a little red cover on it, we’ll pop that off. A big rubber cover, positive with the red, black negative. So like I said it’s a BikeMaster DLFP7B-BS. The voltage is 12.8 and the cranking amps is 125. So we’re going to go ahead and remove the side covers, and get started. Alright so the battery is located right here on the left side of the bike. We need to remove this cover to gain access to it, but this cover is above this cover so we need to remove this cover first.
You may have three 8 mm bolts but on this bike they’re just easily twist, just flip up the lever, twist and you hear it pop loose. Do that for all 3, and this cover will be removed. Wiggle a lit bit and you can remove it. Now for this cover we have two 8 mm bolts, so we grab a ratchet, extension and an 8mm socket and remove those 2 bolts. Alright once you get those 2 covers removed, you notice your battery is located right here. Next we’re going to remove the 2 battery terminals, so you can use a number 2 Phillips screwdrivers or an 8 mm wrench. Depending if someone already stripped the Philips side out is when you can use the Phillips or the wrench. We’ll start with the positive side and repeat with the negative terminal end.
Alright so once we get the battery terminals disconnected, we’re going to need a 10 mm socket and ratchet to remove this 10mm bolt to unhook the battery door. Once we have the 10mm bolt removed we can hinge the battery door open and remove the battery. Get the battery door out of the way; we can wiggle this battery out. So there’s the old heavy one we took out, discard that. Here’s a new light and nice one. What’s nice about this battery is it actually fits inside the battery holder as you’ll see. Wiggle it in there and there’s really no gaps. There’s some lithium ION batteries that are used to replace or upgrade are universal and they only take up like half or a third of the battery box, and then you got to stuff the outside with foam. That way it doesn’t rattle around in there. So this one fits pretty good and snug.
Now that we get the battery in the box, we can go ahead and grab the battery holder or battery bracket. It’s got 2 holes here they need to hook on to the side tabs inside the battery box, hold it in position. We’ll grab that 10 mm bolt and start it by hand and tighten it up a bit. Next we’ll grab our ratchet 10 mm socket and tighten it down. Now that we got that snugged down, the battery is held into the battery box. We go and remove our old bolts out of the battery terminal ends.
You’re going to notice these are smaller eyelet holes on the battery terminal ends, so we’re going to use a smaller hardware that came with our battery as you go to reconnect to the battery. So grab some sand paper/ wire brush and clean up the terminal ends. Well clean both sides positive and negative and both sides of the terminal. Alright so now we got the ends cleaned up, we can go and grab the quick disconnect for the battery tender. You’ll notice that it’s got the 2 sides that go onto the battery, positive and negative. On the positive side it has a 7.8 fuse in the in fuse holder, then it goes down to the other end which has a water tight connection. Pop that off then you can connect that to your battery tender. So what we’re going to do is keep the charging port side down here, it will be behind the white cover that covers the air filter. Run along the frame we’ll go up here and use the factory zip tie and then out to the negative/ positive side of the battery. Alright so we’re going to undo the zip tie, hold the little clip and slide it apart,, that way we can reuse it. We’ll take the battery terminal ends for the battery tender, tuck them in there. Use the factory zip tie and retighten it, making sure the positive and negative ends will reach the battery itself. Next we’ll grab a couple of zip ties and zip tie that it in place. So when it’s not in use, just tuck it up behind the white cover as it will cover it. We go ahead and grab some cutters and cut the ends of the zip ties. Alright so now that we got the quick disconnect cable for our battery tender installed, we can go ahead and open the hardware that came with our battery and we can reconnect everything to the battery. You want to get your little blocks out with the thread in them first. Depending on how you want to mount your terminals now, you may want it with the threads up or with them towards you.
I’m going to install it with the threads towards me. It’s going to take a little bit of finesse because we have to lift the block up a little bit to get the bolt started in it. Alright so once you get that block inside your battery terminal, we’re going to go ahead and take the quick disconnect terminal end for the battery tender. Place that next then we put the bolt inside the eyelet for the terminal for the bike, and then sandwich it in there and then tighten it up. You may need a little screwdriver just to lift the block, to get the bolt started in the block. Put the bolt into the terminal end, get it started put it through the battery eyelet, put the quick disconnect in the battery tender and we’ll stick it into the bolt within the bike. Get it lined up the way we want it then really tighten it down. Alright so now we get the negative side on and tight, we go and repeat the process for the positive side. We go and slide our block in. We’re at our quick disconnect positive lead for the battery tender, and then the bike end. Sandwich it together and tighten it up.
So the block’s in we’re going to grab our screw, need a small screwdriver to lift the block up or stop it from spinning, so you can tighten it up. We need to get it started, we go and readjust our cables where we want them. Go ahead and tighten it down. Check the negative side again. Alright so now you got the negative and positive terminals tight on the battery we can reinstall the boot over the positive terminal.
Once you have the boot over the positive terminal we can go ahead and reinstall the cover. We’ll line it up under the seat, under the fender, line up the bolt holes, grab the bolts. The longer one goes up top for the seat bolt. We go and start that by hand. The shorter one goes down low, start that one by hand. Now both bolts started by hand, we can grab the 8 mm and ratchet and tighten them up. Alright so now that you’ve got these two 8 mm bolts tight and holding that cover in position we can grab the air filter cover, and go ahead and reinstall that. Make sure its in the groove all the way around along the cover we just installed, push in on it, lock it in, twist the tabs and lock them in and then push the tab flat. Sometimes this side is a little tricky, you may have to push with your finger or thumb, to get it to catch So now we’ve got that cover on, if you had the other style cover with three 8 mm bolts. You would start them by hand and then switch over to ratchet and snug them down.
So let’s go ahead and see if it starts. Alright so we put the choke on half way, and we’ll see how fast it starts up. It fired right up pretty quickly.
I just want to show you how the quick disconnect with the battery tender works. So we’re going to go ahead and just push down and wiggle a little bit and pull it out. Next you would pull that water proof cap off, go ahead and connect it to the battery tender, plug it in. That way it would keep the battery fully charged while it’s not in use or when stored for the winter. When you wanted to go riding unplug the battery tender from the wall disconnect the lead and put the water tight cap back on, and just tuck it back up in there and then you don’t see the cable at all. So that’s how the quick disconnect lead works for the battery tender.
So with the bike starting and running as it should, that’s it. We just showed you how to replace/ upgrade your battery in Suzuki DRZ400.
