i've heard a lot of owners of aprilia's talking about the battery dying on them. the bike will start after some trouble, then the battery dies.

a friend of mine (an aprilia mechanic) said the problem is common and here's the reason why.

when starting an aprilia is goes through a series of checks and you need to wait for them to complete. if so, the battery is fine. it easy to turn on the key and hit the starter (i've done it myself). turn on the key and let it cycle through. i've noticed my gsxr prefers this too.

Ahh, the dreaded dash reset failure. Very true (but I have never heard of a battery actually dying, only resetting the dash during a "weak" start-up ???). It not only occurs when you hit the starter button while it is still going through the diagnostics, but it is also common if you let the bike sit long enough that the battery loses some juice. The prevailing thought is that the electronics on the bike are fairly involved, and Aprilia should have chosen a beefier battery to run them. The solution is a more powerful battery made by Westco, or to keep the stock battery on a trickle charger (my solution). With the Westco installed, I have never heard of anyone experiencing a problem. If anyone needs the part number, let me know and I can dig it out for you.

apparantly the battery killing comes when people try re-starting over and over again. it sounds like the stock battery is really small and doesn't take or hold a charge well, but we didn't talk in a lot of detail.

It's not just if you don't let it cycle through, which I always do...it seems that the OEM battery and the replacement I bought...umm at walmart ....just suck or the charging system in the bike is crap

I need to order the westco battery it seems, but for now my solution is the battery tender every couple weeks

no, I think the charging system is adequate. It just takes a lot of power to crank over a big V twin and the stock battery needs a solid charge to do it, a little bigger battery and the problem goes away, from the experiences I've read anyhow.

The problem doesn't really go away with a bigger battery. Although it will happen a whole lot less often. I too think it has to do with the high compression involved. Otherwise these are great bikes.