This Lithium Motorcycle Battery Is The Best Battery I’ve Ever Bought And It’s Not Even Close

Three years ago, I made a purchase for which I had no idea I’d fall head over heels. In early 2022, I replaced a tired lead-acid motorcycle battery with a Noco NLP14 lithium battery. I just wanted a working motorcycle, but I discovered one of the best upgrades you can do to any vehicle. The lithium battery boosted my motorcycle’s electrical system so well that it was like I got a brand-new 20-year-old bike. Now, years later, this little black box is still the best battery I’ve ever purchased.

Back in 2021, I bought a cool budget bike. I spent just $1,300 on a 1999 Triumph Tiger 900. It was my first British bike, my first adventure bike, and my first motorcycle with a three-cylinder engine. The beater Triumph was glorious with its soft suspension, ample storage, and raspy soundtrack.

The yellow bug of a motorcycle instantly became my go-to ride no matter the weather, but it also had a weird problem. It always had trouble turning over. If I put a brand-new lead-acid battery into the bike and hit the start button, usually nothing happened. I would hear a click, and the odometer would go dark, but that’s it. But if I hooked up a lithium jump pack to the bike, it always started without failure. Later, I bought a bigger lead-acid battery, and that worked so long as I rode the bike at least once every couple of weeks. Any longer, and I was back to using a jump pack to start it.

I performed countless hours of research into this issue, and the best explanation I was able to come up with at first was that Triumph ECUs prevent the starter from engaging if battery voltage is too low. However, that information came from reports written by owners of modern Triumph twin-cylinder engine motorcycles living in cities. My bike was over a decade older than theirs and ran on a different architecture.

Thankfully, I did find plenty of reports of starting issues with Triumph Tigers from the era mine came from. Based on too much time spent flipping through pages on the Internet, it seems the electrical systems of those bikes don’t age well, leading to resistance, wiring breaks, and parasitic drain. Then, even if you try to start with a strong battery, you might get nothing. People have come up with a patchwork of hacks, from shortening battery cables and hooking up to battery tenders daily to wiring up solar panels to keep the battery topped up at all times.

I was thinking about doing the solar panel thing, but then it hit me. If my bike started with a jump pack, what’s stopping me from having a jump pack hooked up at all times?

Going Lithium

That’s how I discovered lithium motorcycle batteries. Lithium motorcycle batteries have actually been around for a long time, but they weren’t always good. When I wrote about this on the Opposite-Lock enthusiast forum years ago, denizens of the site noted that older lithium moto batteries sometimes had a knack for blowing up under your crotch because they weren’t designed to be charged by a typical charging system. Indeed, a lithium fire isn’t something you want to mess with by itself, much less a lithium fire happening between your legs and presumably at speed.

Batteries have come a long way since then, and now you can buy drop-in replacement lithium batteries that have their own management systems. Noco batteries like my NLP14 have a BMS designed to prevent the battery from being charged too much or discharged too much. The BMS also has some programming to try to protect the battery from cold, heat, and other dangers.

Noco also isn’t some random company on Amazon. The brand has been around for over a century, and the company’s chargers, jump packs, and other accessories are no joke. I’ve seen Noco jump packs bring semi-tractors back to life on their own.

So, during a cold Chicago February in 2022, I spent $120 on a Noco NLP14 500-Amp lithium battery. I then spent another $30 on a Noco-branded 1-Amp charger with a lithium charging function. The battery was said to be more or less the equivalent of a YTX14-BS lead acid battery, but it’s been way better than that.

The instant benefit of the battery was that it patched my broken Triumph up in a jiffy. Seriously, the Noco fired up my Triumph every single time without failure. The starter always moved with a sort of gusto I hadn’t even witnessed in the past. The benefits didn’t stop with the starter, either. The bike’s headlights seemed brighter, the engine ran a bit smoother, and the horn seemed less pathetic.

Giving my Triumph this battery was seemingly the motorcycle equivalent of finding the fountain of youth. My crusty 20-year-old bike seemingly had significantly more vigor than before.

I then kept that battery in my Triumph for a year, and it was incredible. The battery never failed me, no matter if it was 15 degrees outside or 110 degrees. It didn’t fail me when I dropped the bike nor when I accidentally left the ignition on. The battery also worked even if I let the bike sit for more than a month. No matter what, the battery was always happy to deliver over 13 volts and lots of cranking power.

Sadly, the fun came to a screeching halt in 2023 when the Triumph began misfiring. New plugs and wires didn’t seem to fix it. The issue was also entirely random. The bike would run perfectly one day and then run on two cylinders the next. Nothing made sense.

Eventually, I gave up and sold the bike to another enthusiast of cheap two-wheelers. Later, he told me that the bike’s main harness was a mess. The reason it didn’t like turning over actually had to do with a break in the wiring. This was also why the bike randomly misfired. He solved the first one by installing a hidden start switch that hung directly off of the starter. The second was solved with wiring patches.

It’s So Good

That made me even happier about the battery. This beast was so strong that it overcame garbage wiring for two riding seasons. Yet, I also didn’t really have much of a need for the battery after I sold the bike, so I let it sit for a whole year on my kitchen table.

I was pleasantly surprised when I pressed the battery back into service in 2024, and it didn’t skip a beat. I didn’t even need to charge the battery because it went into a sort of storage mode when I left it on my table. In 2024, I got pretty crazy with this thing. The Noco has been used at least a few times in all of my vintage motorcycles and then I even bought a motorcycle to car battery terminal converter, screwed it into the Noco, and put the battery in one of my Smarts.

In each case, the vehicle’s electrical performance had noticeable upgrades. My Suzuki RE-5 rotary motorcycle started faster and harder. My BMW R60/7 felt like it had electricals 30 years newer, my Buell Lightning XB9SX ran like a loud, potato-firing sewing machine, and most recently, the battery has even helped me revive an old Genuine Stella scooter (a license-built Vespa PX). The only difficulty I’ve had is choosing which one of my eight motorcycles deserves the Noco the most.

Earlier, I noted how I used this battery in a Smart. For years, I’ve been trying to solve the problem of Smart building its cars with battery wells that are just too small to get batteries in and out of without hurting yourself. In theory, a tiny lithium battery would be the ultimate solution to this.

I thought using this Noco motorcycle battery as a car battery was a crazy idea, but I tried it, anyway. I am not surprised to report to you that lithium batteries are great for crappy, high-mileage cars, too. The Smart started with alacrity and much like the motorcycles before it, the Noco seemed to improve the Smart’s electrical system. In a previous piece, I noted how 2008 Smart Fortwos have a bit of a bug where the headlights will dim during shifting. These cars did this when they were new, and they still do it now, some 17 years later. However, the lights don’t dim with the lithium battery!

Unfortunately, there’s a reason you don’t normally use motorcycle batteries in your car. Not only do motorcycle batteries not have enough cold cranking amps, but they don’t have nearly enough capacity, either. I found if I left the Noco installed in the Smart and just let the car sit, the car usually depleted the poor little thing in well less than a week.

That being said, I have seen people using lithium motorcycle batteries in cars for track days because a lithium motorcycle battery is an affordable way to shave an easy 50 pounds out of your car.

I think all of the benefits above can be traced back to our good old friend, chemistry. See, when you put a load on a lead-acid battery, you can witness an initial voltage drop. Depending on how demanding your device is, that initial drop might be enough to notice with your eyes. A lead-acid battery also drops voltage as it loses charge. Lithium is different. Instead of a voltage curve, you basically get a steady voltage the whole time right until the battery gets near death. It’s more of a plateau than a curve.

Good Comes At A Price

This seems to be a night-and-day difference when you’re running old motorcycles and such like I do. Old bikes have finicky electrical systems and their batteries put in some work containing the chaos. In my experience, the Noco just seems to do everything better than even a good lead-acid battery.

At the same time, I’m sure you would expect the Noco to be a vast improvement because it currently sells for $130 direct from the manufacturer. Noco also recommends making sure your charger has a lithium option, which might mean spending more money. In comparison, a YTX14-BS lead-acid battery can cost you $40 or so, and your existing charger will likely be able to handle it without a problem. Personally, I think paying extra is worth it here.

I’ll also note that Noco sells its lithium batteries in various sizes and capacities, so your exact cost might be different. Still, if you spring for the battery, I think you’ll be happy. Batteries are normally consumables that I buy and don’t think about until they die. But this is different. This is the first battery I think I’ve ever thought of myself as a fan of. But it’s that good.

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