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Regulator

Started by The Speeding Stag, 16/03/05 - 08:58:38

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Varaderoguy

Arh yes, Lead Acid Batteries.  Temprimental little sods.  Let me explain to you what a cell is (in terms of a battery).  A Lead Acid Battery is made up of compartments, which are all electrically connected to each other.  The Acid in combination with the lead strips inside the commartments or cells creates a chemical reaction, which in its most simplistic form, produces electricity.  Each Cell only produced about 3volts each, hense why the cells are all connected in series together (i.e. what do you get when you put two AA batteries together, you get 3V).  A Lead Acid battery is esentially the samething, but scaled up a little.  If a cell dies for any reason (e.g. no acid / condensed / filtered water), then you loose a little bit of the battery. 

If you current requirements are high (eg you have all your electrical toys on the bike), then the amount of current flowing from the battery, and the regululator / alternator / battery is faulty / below par, then you are going to suffer from lots of electrical odderties, and eventually a dead battery and lack of operating bike. 

On the last point by t101man, 14.8 volts seems too low for my liking when charging.  I would look at Regulator / alternator.  Starting with the alternator, put your multimeter into AC mode and send us the voltages from the alternator (prior to the voltage going to the regulator).  See what you get at idle and at 2000rpm.  Now look at the output on the regulator. I think most regulators also include a rectifier (a device that turns AC into DC).  You need to check the output on AC prior to the battery - if there an excessive amount (more than 8 volts at revs), then you rectifier / regulator maybe faulty.  No AC comopoent will be good.  Take it in little chunks, and fault find the problem this way.
HOC member 28728 - IAM member 326140

Mark H

Anything above 12v positive is enough to charge the battery. Sounds like there is NO fault with the bike. When the dealer says it has lost some cells, he means that it has shorted out internally (the plates that sit close together to generate the electricity have started touching basically..)

Modern batteries seem to fail more catastrophically than batteries of old - older batteries seemed to give a warning before completely failing. Modern ones seem to be perfect one minute and then completely dead the next. I reckon this is down to cost saving on the part of the manufacturer, weight saving and smaller dimensions of the battery - they're building them less robust IMHO.
Team DNF is now just waiting for another arse kicking...