TOPIC:

What do you think guys?

Would you rather run a charger for 3.5 hours or run a trickle charger overnight?

What are the pros and cons of running a trickle charger.

I know from my experience that if I do not plan on riding for a while and put it on the trickle charger for a while it fires right up.

Anything to look out for when running a trickle charger?

Just went through this. My charger was faster but that was not my problem... I keep forgetting to disconnect.

One battery later I now use the Battery Tender Junior from Z1 Ent. and I just plug it in every time I drive it into the work shop (see avatar).

Will not over charge, comes with wiring kit and inline fuse that can be permanently wired into the bike and it is now just a habit like turning off the fuel petcock.

Foolproof.

Best of success.

A "trickle charger" is typically a slow rate charger which does not have any overcharge detection or protection circuits, but still can be used safely because the amount it overcharges the battery is low enough that it doesn't overheat the battery and boil the water out.

A fast charger (like less than six hours) needs circuitry to taper off the charging current as the battery gets charged or it can harm the battery. If it does not have such circuitry, you must disconnect it before the battery gets overcharged. personally, I would not use a charger that couldn't tell when the battery was done because it is not safe.

The battery tender I use which is always left on the battery has circuitry to know where to stop charging and also temperature matching so it tracks the temp of the battery. 12V lead acid batteries have a tempco of about -14 mV/C.

What Bountyhunter said.
Or, to avoid all that, invest in an AGM battery.
Last year I ditched my conventional wet cell for an Odyssey. Rode all summer, put the bike away in my unheated shed (northeast)in November. Didn't hook up a Battery Tender or any kind of charger and never started the bike while in storage.
The next April, rolled the bike out of the shed and it fired right up. Worth the extra expense.
All my other batteries DO go on Battery Tenders.

I must add that I just don't "put it away wet"
I winterize the bike by fogging it with CRC Marine Fogger untill it stalls. I put a tablespoon of Marvel Mystery Oil in each cylinder (old school),then hand spin a couple of revs.
I use Stabil in a full tank of gas and block off intake and exhaust. It still fires right up in April, with all that smoke! Fuel injection does help ('84 GPZ).

Here's some Basic Battery Info

I've got battery tenders, two of them. They charge as they should, but they don't have any kind of mind to them. They charge at a specific amp determined by load, meaning more MA will be drawn by a dead battery than a fully charged one. It does not take much "circuitry or brains" to do this, pretty much apply a specific voltage to the battery is all they do and allow current draw to be determined by battery condition. They do have a green lamp and a red lamp to tell you if the battery is charged, but the lamp has nothing to do with how much charge the tender is giving, it's always giving the same charge regardless of whether the light is green or red, just the battery being dead, by ohms law will always draw more current than a fully charged one. You can put an amp meter on the tender and watch charging amps and it is linear, meaning amps will start high and taper down at a specific rate and never shut off. It's not like some of the newer chargers for camera batteries ect, that do sense current draw and shut off completely when the charge is complete. "They say" to charge batterys at least every 30 days. I had like 8 motorcycle batteries I did this too and since I have like 8 motorcycles I only ride once every year or two, I had not the greatest results, all 8 were no good whithin a couple years. I have a lot better results just charging every 6 months or so.

The best circuit design for lead acid batteries is known as "CC/CV" in the battery charging business, and it stands for:

"constant current/constant voltage"

It means when the battery's voltage is lower than the target voltage (typically about 13.6V for such a charger) the circuitry outputs constant current until the battery voltage gets to 13.6V, whereupon it goes into constant voltage mode and tapers the charging current off as needed to maintain the target voltage.

These chargers can be left attached to the battery indefinitely with no ill effects. I recommend also having the proper temp coefficinet built in (about -15mV/degC) to prevent overcharging at higher ambient temperatures. Not absolutely mandatory, but it will track the battery voltage better.

The "brainless" battery chargers just put a low Ohmage power resistor in series with the battery to limit the current. They monitor the charging current and flag a comparator when it drops below a certain point.

It isn't a good idea to leave a battery on a charger that continues to push current into the battery after it's charged if that current exceeds about c/20. And, even at that low rate, the battery water has to be replenished if it is continuously charged for a long period.

The "c" (amp-hour capacity) of a typical MC battery is probably in the range of maybe 15 - 20 A-hours, so a trickle charger that just dumps maybe 0.5A - 1A continuously is probably OK to run as long as you top off the battery's water level.