To Gel or not to Gel
 

I bought a gel battery and they are amazing. After the bike have been standing for two months it would still start the bike with ease even tough it took a few cranks to get it going.
Cold mornings is not a match for this battery even if it take 20 cranks to get going.
Recently when cranking the starter for the third time the gel battery just suddenly died with no warning and I could not get it back to life agian, even with the special gel charger.
I have taken it back to the dealer and they have also not been able to revive the battery. They are willing to replace it with a new one though.
The qeustion is, are these batterys reliable enough to take on a big trip.
I would like to know what other peoples experiance is with these batterys.
In the past I have had many a flat battery when using lead acid batterys but I have always been able to get the bike going agian. If this happened on a big trip I was sure to have been in the s#$@t if the battery just gave out with no prior warning.

IMHO it's best to forget Gel on the big trips but they are nice for other purposes.

I took one around the world and I still have it. It's now well over two years old. The bike has sat still for months at a time. I run with the headlight on at all times- even with an electric vest in slow traffic for hours. Everything I can think of that is supposed to kill a battery. I can't get it to fail. Also, I crashed in Siberia and the bike was on it's side overnight. Next day the battery was fine- no acid to leak out.

I've used a Hawker gel battery for over 40,000 miles. No problems. Much better starting. Seems to handle knocks off-road. Even survived a high speed accident.