not enough battery powahhh!

[mysterious_rider]

Basically, bike doesn't have enough juice to power certain things sometimes. The horn will only work properly (aftermarket horn) after giving the bike some revvs. after that it's fine.

Recently just fitted some heated grips and realised my problem as the bike wont charge the battery while the grips and lights are all on at once.

How would I go about figuring the problem from the rectifier to a dead battery, to possibly dead statorplate charging coils?

I've just put the battery on charge (utterly dead) it was perfect before i fitted heated grips!!

I've also recently purchased a multimeter, am I right in thinking to find the rectifier, check the wires going in and coming out from it, any ideas what volts/ OHMS I should be seeing?

Cheers BTW bike is a gs500e!

[Howling TerrorOutOfOffice]

There are tons of threads in the workshop about testing your charging system.

Good...you're charging the battery. If it's in good condition then it should be showing over 12.6 volts after 'resting' for an hour. 12.6 is roughly 90% of it's full capacity.
https://www.totalmotorcycle.com/maintenance/photos/BatteryChart.gif

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[orac]

check the voltage going onto the battery above 4000 rpm. should be around 14v, but no grater than 15.5, check the battery feed from the battery to the reg/rec
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[Robby]

A knackered battery can suck a lot of juice out of the system, for no effect. If it is discharging to nothing while sat there with no current draw over a few days, it's toast.

A dead reg/rec will either not charge at all, or massively overcharge and break things (blown bulbs are a tell-tale). You don't really get middle ground of poor charging down to knackered reg/rec.

A problem in the stator is possible, but fairly rare. Corrosion on terminals or earth points is more likely.

As a general rule, in good order your bike should put out enough charge to run all of the standard stuff, charge the battery, and have some left over for things like heated grips - although they draw quite a bit. Corroded terminals will easily knock 30% off the available current - ask anyone that has cleaned up the electrical system of an old bike and suddenly had a decent headlight again. A knackered battery will easily suck up another 50% of the available charge - some of my old kick start bikes will hardly run with a knackered battery, but run very well with no battery at all.

So, the things to do:
Charge the battery, check the voltage. Leave it disconnected for 24 hours, then check the voltage again. A significant drop shows a knackered battery. If it is a lead acid (semi transparent) type, then check the fluid level and top up with distilled water as required.

Assuming the battery is ok, install it, start the bike and let it warm up with everything turned off. Set the multimeter to volts and put it across the terminals, and hold the revs at 4000. Look for a voltage of 14-15V. If the voltage is staying where it was when the battery was disconnected, or is lower, then it isn't charging.

Now, assuming that you are seeing 14-15V, turn on electrical systems (lights, grips etc) one by one and see if the voltage drops below about 13.5. If it does, then you can find out what it drawing a lot of current.

I would also go over all of the connectors and earth points, cleaning off corrosion with emery paper and reassembling with a light smear of vaseline or copper grease to prevent further corrosion.

My money is on a knackered battery though. Tis the season.

[Teflon-Mike]

Before messing with the Multimeter; first port of call is to check some specs. Lets look at Whats, WATT

What's the power output of the generator? You ought to find two figures in the Haynes, one for the tick-over delivery, another for the peak power delivery at a certain rpm.

Next, again from the Haynes, check the wattage of equipment;

Side Light
Headlamp - Dip
Headlamp - Main
Tail Lamp
Stop Lamp
Dash Illumination bulbs
Tell-Tale Lamps
Indicator lamps

Those are the main ones; you'll have some other equipment as well; the flasher unit will draw a 'bit' of current, especially if its an old electro-magnetic one. Horn, any relays.

THEN you have all your accessory equipment; you have heated grips. What do the specs say they draw? Do you have a fag lighter socket for a GPS or anything? Phone charger? Upgraded headlamp bulb / twin headlamps? Have you fitted LED indies or anything? Have they got balast resistors to load the flasher to get the right flash rate?

Add up the watts of the standard equipment, and chances are that they are more than the watts the generator makes at tick over.

Take off the watts of equipment that's not going to be 'on' continiousely; like your indicators; you only light two bulbs at a time, and then only for half the time (though wont reduce power consumption by quite half).... and generator ought to make a BIT more power, at 'peak' than all the equipment can draw.

Now, your battery, is an electicity reservoir; when the generator is making more power than the equipment is using, it gets charged; when the equipment is drawing more power than the generator is making; battery discharges to keep all the equipment working.

There MAY (and its more than likely) be nothing wrong with your charging system, or battery... its merely a case that you are USING more electricity than you are MAKING..... works a bit like bank accounts I find!

This time of year; first hit they electrics get is cold starting; engine taking a bit more out of the battery to churn the colder, thicker oil, and a bit longer to get the motor going.

Next; its probably dark, so you are using the headlamp more; so more load on the electrical system, meaning less jucie to top up the battery from starting.

Compounding it; damp, greasy roads; you are probably not ragging the arse of the bike as much, so its spending more of its time, with the motor turning lower revs, making less 'spare' electricity.

AND; if you are using heated grips; they often put a VERY big load on the generator.

So first port of call is to do the accountancy and see if your generator actually has the capacity to supply ALL the equipment connected to it, standard and accessory.

Next, ponder the factors that might not be giving it the 'best chance' to keep the battery topped.

You might not need to do anything major; and something as daft as turning the lights off when you start it up, and leaving them off, until the engine is warm, and chokes off, gives it enough of a chance to get some juice back in the battery, before you ride off.

Setting the idle speed a couple of hundred rpm higher can help a lot too.

As can holding a lower gear, and letting the bike rev a bit more, when riding at lower speed.

Minimising the equipment you 'use' will help too.

In Day-Light, I will use side-light only, rather than dipped beam, as a conspicuity light, can save 30-50W of electric....

For Snowie's Super-Dream, we've had to be a BIT more strategic, to find the power to run all the electric crap... sorry 'accessories' she wanted off it. Its only a 125, so we cant expect a lot of spare power; but it was the first 4-stroke 125 with e-start only, so Honda erred a bit on the side of caution and gave it a fairly beefy generator and battery, which helped.

However; she wanted heated grips; a fag lighter socket for a GPS, a phone charger (as well as GPS!), an upgraded head-lamp, and an alarm.

Stock Headlamp was rated at 35W, she wanted a 55W Halogen. That's an extra 20W straight off; Heated Grips are Oxfords, they have one of the lower current draws, but still up to about 50W. The Phone charger only delivers 1/4W as does the GPS supply, but they probably draw a fair bit more.... but at around 1w between them, negligible compared to the 70+w of load from grips and lamp.

The Oxford grips, have a fancy control box, and switch off if battery volts drop; and switched on, with the headlamp on, sat at junctions, with the revs at tick-over, the headlamp 'pulses' slightly, as the grips kick in and out.....

If they were cheaper ones with less sophisticated regulation, that would just be draining the battery....

Anyway, to 'find' the Watts that she wanted to power grips and headlamp, had to do some seriouse power-saving measures.

Most of the electrical load is lights, so most saving was going to be found swapping tungsten bulbs for LED's.

Book for the CB125 says the genny delivers 150W@5000rpm. (it doesn't give tick-over output; I would be surprised if it was 50W, and worth noting 5000rpm is just above 'cruising' rpm)

Standard Headlamp draws 40W, Side light draws 4w, indicators 21w, stop lamp, 21w, & tail 5w. BUT, significant load is from the dash-board lamps. Each draw almost 4w.... one in the speedo, one in the tacho, between them they draw more power than the tail lamp!

Using LED tail lamp bulb, LED Dash lamps, and LED side light, all drawing less than 1/4W, freed up about 15W of power, on the side-light circuit. That 'sort' of makes up the extra watts for the upgraded headlamp bulb.

Using LED indicator bulbs, tell-tales and an electronic flasher unit, so that we didn't have to use power sapping balast resistors to get fixed flash rate, AND solid state flasher could save a few milliwatts of power, saves around 45w of 'non continiouse' load. Stop lamp saves a bit more, and every little helps; especially when this equipment would be most used when the engine revs are low. So gives the genny better chance to keep battery topped up...

But as said; that headlamp still 'pulses' with the heated grips controller.....

Next stage is to try a 35w PIR headlamp bulb; which ought to give even more light than the 55w Halogen, (co-incidentally a 'stock' GS500 headlamp!) but draw LESS juice than the original tungsten, helping make a bit more juice available for those grips.

Anyway; as said, do the proffit & loss sums on the wattages, to begin with.

I suspect that you may have no 'fault' in the bikes electrical system, and it's likely to be accessory grips sucking the battery dry, especially if they are cheaper ones, and worse unregulated ones, working only on a manual on-off switch.

Once we have some idea of the supply & demand situation, can look at best way to go; as said may just be a case of warming the engine without the lights on, or using just side lights in day-light, or riding with a few more revs.....
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[mysterious_rider]

great information guys thanks!!

Right. to clear a few things up had a quick test. Had a look at the battery after it had charged. 12.4volts

when on the bike, with the lights on and the bike running it went to 12.59v and just over when i blipped the throttle.

Turning the lights off upped the output a bit. I think it reached just over 13? will have to double check it..

The grips are oxfords £62 ones. Not cheap by all means, but are very warm.

I've also recently switched to twin headlights that run 55w yellow 'all weather bulbs'. They are also very cack.

You suggets I go around switching to LED replacements? Not a bad idea mate. I'll have to check it out. Well I'll see if the bike continues to charge the battery without the grips, It's been fine for a few weeks with no troubles. Could be the duel headlight sapping some power slightly. Bit of a bugger really.

Any suggestions on the headlight side of things? two lots of 55w seems like a lot of power to waste on crap bulbs. can you get h4 LEDS?

Otherwise the bike seems to charge the battery on its own okay. I'll check through the week anyway.

[Teflon-Mike]

[mysterious_rider]

thanks mate. So are you sure a HID kit would draw less power? I'll still be using two bulbs though.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Bi-Xenon-H4-HID-Conversion-Kit-35W-6000K-8000K-Hi-Low-/320732992028?pt=UK_CarsParts_Vehicles_CarParts_SM&hash=item4aad2d121c

that any good? If not, link to what you think is best?

I'll probably avoid using the heated grips till I know my power usage is minimal

[mysterious_rider]

Hmm A second look and it seems those HIDS are illegal. Since I'm on my probation period it's prolly a good idea I steer clear.


Still, if i replace the normal bulbs from the dash, and the sidelights that's 4x 5watts to save, then take off whatever the leds will need.

maybe not wack the grips on max. (do they draw current while they are off, or merely having them on for ten mins with the engine idling enough to kill the battery??)

Try and find some new bulbs? I can barely see 20ft infront of me but they take 55-60 watts each and they are the all weather halfords bulbs. Shit if you ask me.

its probably just the small headlights not reflecting enough of the bulb.