6-Volt Batteries for Dummy Motorcyclists

Every day, the members of the Antisocial Network's team of researchers run across stupid claims made by unqualified freelancers who are/were only in it for the money. If we'd started in on this blog ten years ago, we'd have been finding posts at AssociatedContent, Helium, and many others that have faded into the sewage treatment plant of the internet. The mother of internet stupidification, however, remains alive and (reasonably) well. It's eHow.com. So today, we honor an eHow post; one written by Darla Ferrara about "How to Charge a 6-Volt Motorcycle Battery." Leaf Group has moved it to GoneOutdoors.com...

Ferrara decided to introduce her content with a statement that our staffers found highly questionable:

"Charging a battery on a motorcycle is different from working on your car battery."

Darla went on to "inform" her readers that,

"Because of the special nature of a 6-volt battery, it requires a specific charger, often referred to as a trickle charger."

It would have been nice of Darla to explain both the "special nature of a 6-volt battery," as well as what is different about a trickle charger. Don't forget, though, that all this was posted by a freelancer who studied biology, which may be where she learned to call charging a battery "replacing the voltage." All we can say to that is WTF???

Once Ferrara launched into the instructions, you can see that she found some instructions somewhere that are fairly good. She went into the safety aspects and routine maintenance – though who doesn't know you should clean off the posts periodically? We figure that's mostly in there to reach the minimum word count.

Be that as it may, Darla's instructions fell short in a few places, steps such as

• "Remove the battery from your motorcycle." – Probably unnecessary; though you may have remove it to just to get access to the posts.
• "Hook the battery charger up to the battery. Look closely at the charger to identify the positive and negative leads." – Don't look now, Darla, but the leads are color-coded on the charger: red for positive, black for negative.
• "Hook the battery charger up to the battery. Look closely at the charger to identify the positive and negative leads." – Yep, that's in there twice...

Perhaps Ferrara's biggest problem is that she never mentioned the point that  most likely drove the OQ to the internet: car batteries are 12-volt, so can you charge a 6-volt motorcycle battery with one of them? The answer is definitely "No." Ferrara missed out on a chance to explain that you must either use a 6-volt charger or the 6-volt setting on a dual-voltage charger. She also missed out on a chance to explain what makes a trickle charger different: it's a low-amperage charger. And while she was at it, she could have mentioned maintenance chargers, which automatically charge a battery when its charge falls below a certain point and stop charging when the full charge is reached. But no, none of that's in there because our Dumbass of the Day didn't understand any of that.

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DD - BATTERIES