Tweet
An update on a great new improvement. Chief batteries were always a pain. Since the 70's nobody made a good one, close to 29 AmpHour. The cheapo's either lasted a year or leaked at the terminals. Placing a 10-13 Amp Hour jap battery in a shell made it hard to check liquid level. If the liquid disappears while running, kiss your armature goodbye, they actually melt the solder off because the battery is what holds the voltage to 6. Without the battery, it'll try to put out 100.
I put a little "gel cell", home alarm type battery in a shell. It worked fine around town but on my first trip, to Rhinebeck, NY, the battery exploded 100 miles from home. And I mean exploded, broke the muffle bracket of the muffler and the shell was 1000 pieces.
Now they make these little, tiny lithium batteries, Shorai, in 6 and 12 volt. They weigh about a half pound and no liquid. I have a Nissan Leaf car, which uses about 1000 of them, not a unproven technology. I used 2 of LFX18L2-BS06 at about $100 each and they fit into a Starklite shell. They can go sideways, upside down, etc. and together weigh maybe a pound. I've now got over 2,000 miles on them and consider it a success. Each battery is 18 amp hours, so in parallel I have 6 volts and 36 amp hours, horns nice and loud.
To use these though, you absolutely need an electronic voltage regulator, like the one made by Gene Harper. His looks perfect, nobody can tell from outside.
And to use the electronic regulator the generator is converted from 3 brush to a semi-modern shunted 2 brush. Takes 10 minutes if the generator is "on the bench". It supposedly can be done on the bike, but on the last one I did, the field wire had to be extended an inch, which would have been hard.
I put a little "gel cell", home alarm type battery in a shell. It worked fine around town but on my first trip, to Rhinebeck, NY, the battery exploded 100 miles from home. And I mean exploded, broke the muffle bracket of the muffler and the shell was 1000 pieces.
Now they make these little, tiny lithium batteries, Shorai, in 6 and 12 volt. They weigh about a half pound and no liquid. I have a Nissan Leaf car, which uses about 1000 of them, not a unproven technology. I used 2 of LFX18L2-BS06 at about $100 each and they fit into a Starklite shell. They can go sideways, upside down, etc. and together weigh maybe a pound. I've now got over 2,000 miles on them and consider it a success. Each battery is 18 amp hours, so in parallel I have 6 volts and 36 amp hours, horns nice and loud.
To use these though, you absolutely need an electronic voltage regulator, like the one made by Gene Harper. His looks perfect, nobody can tell from outside.
And to use the electronic regulator the generator is converted from 3 brush to a semi-modern shunted 2 brush. Takes 10 minutes if the generator is "on the bench". It supposedly can be done on the bike, but on the last one I did, the field wire had to be extended an inch, which would have been hard.
Comment