KNOW YOUR... BATTERIES

FB: How good is a battery on a standard bike?

GH: Standard batteries which, nowadays, are normally sealed AGM (absorbed glass mat, a special design of glass fibre mat designed to wick/absorb the battery acid/electrolyte between the battery plates), are normally very effective and far better than the previous – and often leaky – regular vented lead acid batteries of my youth, which often created nasty corrosion problems via their unavoidably necessary overflow pipes. AGM batteries contain only enough liquid to keep their very fine mat wet with sulphuric acid electrolyte, meaning that if their case is