Secondary battery for accessories

[Bike Bunker]

Secondary battery for accessories....

ok ive just come close to finishing my project sports bike and have considered a few electrical items...e.g neons (well LED strips)+heated grips...

only thing is the bike has a permanent light that you cant turn off in fact it has two..a small central on the front nose cone and the usual light only thing yo can adjust is high beam...figured this will use the battery...so thinking about adding a secondary battery for my gadgets and gizmo's that i can just make a secure position under my seat for and remove and charge when i need to??

would this pose any problems ?



Also unrelated any advice on paint my wheels they have about three layers already from previous owners so was considering just getting them powder coated by a pro?

[stinkwheel]

If you're flattening the battery, it means you're using more power than the bikes charging system can produce. The battery only charges using whatever power is "left over" after all the accessories have been powered up.

Adding a second battery will not fix this. I would say using a good quality, known brand, sealed battery would be the most efficient way of making use of the charge available.

LEDs draw a very minimal current (10 or 20mA). A fully charged motorcycle battery would run a strip of say 10 LEDs for more than a month. So, discount LEDs from your energy consumption worries on a modern motorcycle unless you're getting into hundreds of them.

Replacing filament bulbs with LED ones (eg stop and tail lights) will free up power for use elsewhere.

To be totally honest though, unless you're doing something totally mad like running a microwave off an inverter (an inverter can hoover power very quickly and using 240V AC on a motorcycle always struck me as slightly dodgy at best), you'll be working hard to run out of power. It's things running when the engine is off that will run down your battery.

If you're planning on running loads of electrical gizmos off the battery with the bike off, some sort of slave battery might be a good idea. Never seen it on a bike but I do know it's commonly used on camper vans. They have some sort of switching gizmo that makes sure the main battery is fully charged before it starts to charge the leisure battery.

You then get into having to fit all that wiring in, finding space for another battery and adding a shitload of weight which then begs the question, why did you buy a sports bike?

TL;DR : A modern bike will power heated grips and (within reason) as many LEDs as you want with the engine running.
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“Rule one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[Bike Bunker]

[Damon]

[Bike Bunker]

[stinkwheel]

Well, your LEDs are going to be drawing in the region of 150mA in total.

Most bikes these days have a 14Ah battery.

Your battery (assuming it's fully charged to start with) would run 75 LEDs constantly for well over 3 days.



Also, you are a tart. Go on, admit it, you really wanted a goldwing didn't you?.
https://www.goldwings-northwales.org.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Goldwing-light-display.jpg
____________________
“Rule one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[Kickstart]

Hi

Weight is virtually irrelevant to top speed.

However adding a 2nd battery just gives you a bit longer before the battery is flat. If you have enough of a charging system to cope with the load then no advantage, if you don't then just means you will be walking a bit later.

Your strips of LEDs will probably draw negligible current while the heated grips will probably draw 2~3 amps. Suspect your charging system will be fine unless you are doing lots of short journies at low speed.

All the best

Keith
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