Came across this today in s trailtech forum...
Here is some info I posted a while back on my snowbike page that may be helpful. When the internal battery dies you will not maintain your settings as you have noticed. Get it fully charged and it will work much better. You will see the charging icon when it’s charging and the battery meter will eventually fill itself indicating a full charge. Once you disconnect charging the battery indicator will still show full but will turn red and charging icon will not show.
One thing that has not been explained clearly is that the unit does not charge when it’s off.
No matter what the charge settings are. There should be no power draw from the unit when it’s off.
In order to charge the unit, it must be on. Not sleeping either. Screen must be lit. This means if you connect to wall charger you must turn it on and then go turn off your sleep setting AND set it to charge always. (should be set already but If you have it set in charge when running it will not charge without tach wire signal)
Once it’s fully charged you can reset those two settings if you need too and put in on your bike and away you go.
As far as on the bike goes, I have found if you connect it with switched power rather than constant power my VP battery eventually dies. This is mostly because we stop often and it’s on a snowbike so it’s in the cold typically.
I recommend connecting directly to your battery (with fuse) rather then switched power, and riding with sleep settings on and charge always set.
It will not kill your bike battery even if your settings are set to charge always!
Charge always means whenever the unit is on it draws charge from the bike.
Charge when running means that it only draws charge from the bike when it’s on and the bike is running, once you shut the bike off the VP flips over to running on its internal battery.
What’s the difference you say? Well when you shut your bike off frequently and you have sleep set to one minute, each time you stop you start to deplete the internal battery for the time your VP stays on until it goes to sleep. Once it goes to sleep it stops charging. Once it wakes up it charges again. If you don’t have long run cycles between shut offs it will not fully recover. Eventually it draws the internal battery down to zero.
Keep in mind that after 10 minutes in sleep mode the VP shuts off entirely so no more draw from bike.
This protects your bike battery from getting drawn down so these setting keep your VP battery full and your bike safe. The only risk would be if you were to turn off sleep settings and leave the unit on and walk away from your bike.
Typically after sitting for a while the internal battery seems to die so I take my VP inside and connect to wall charger and fully charge the battery. It can take 6-8 hours if it’s totally dead.
Then it works great and I have no issues.
If you start your day with a less than full battery you may end up with these issues.
Aluminum dock, wired to constant power, and keep battery fully charged before your ride and they have been very reliable.
