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Why Do We Need A Battery

  • Thread starter Thread starter Adler
  • Start date Start date
A

Adler

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I've been wondering, Why do our bikes NEED batteries. On the bikes without kickstarters you would need it to start the bike, but with a kickstarter wouldnt it be possible to modify the bike to not require the battery and to run reliably purely on its own recycled energy?

Seems to me that the battery is more trouble then its worth...
 
Adler said:
I've been wondering, Why do our bikes NEED batteries. On the bikes without kickstarters you would need it to start the bike, but with a kickstarter wouldnt it be possible to modify the bike to not require the battery and to run reliably purely on its own recycled energy?

Seems to me that the battery is more trouble then its worth...
Click to expand...

Some guys use tiny batteries and plan on kickstarting, I think you could remove it completely but you would need a big capacitor in place of the battery to keep from frying the regulator or something in the charging system. Better do a little research on that.
 
Am I mistaken in thinking that the only purpose of the battery is to start the bike and to smooth the current? If so, then isn't it a huge waste of space for most people on a bike with a kickstarter?

I mean, I can kickstart my bike with my hand! And its not even hard!

I'm shocked more people don't do this, Ill research it in the morning but I wish someone with more electrical background would pursue this.
 
Adler said:
Am I mistaken in thinking that the only purpose of the battery is to start the bike and to smooth the current? If so, then isn't it a huge waste of space for most people on a bike with a kickstarter?

I mean, I can kickstart my bike with my hand! And its not even hard!

I'm shocked more people don't do this, Ill research it in the morning but I wish someone with more electrical background would pursue this.
Click to expand...

Like Kent said the R/R's job will be pretty tough without battery. When the R/R regulates it disconnects the stator from the electrical system so if something is not there to provide the current the bike will cut out. A small battery is the best solution.
 
You would also have to ensure that your charging system is putting out enough to run the bike when it's idling.

When the charging system is not putting out enough, the battery supplies what's needed. No battery? No run, in that case. :eek:

.
 
It could be done but why would you want to? Stator and regulator would hve to be changed with something custom made. It would cost more to change then it is worth.
 
You guys think a little 12 volt NiCad pack would work? Something like the electric RC cars and airplanes use?
 
tkent02 said:
You guys think a little 12 volt NiCad pack would work? Something like the electric RC cars and airplanes use?
Click to expand...

Or maybe modify a laptop battery... though now that I think about it I'm not sure Li-ion is the best idea for something that is constantly charging/discharging.
 
It wouldn't really charge and discharge much if you didn't use the electric starter.
 
Not going to try it and see until I find out how to make it work. Would you need to adjust the charging output to a different voltage? Again, there wouldn't be much charging and discharging if there was no electric starting.
 
As long as you don't have the high-discharge rate of the electric starter, a Ni-Cad battery would probably work better than lead-acid. :o

Having dealt with many different chemistries in hospital equipment over the years, I have learned that Ni-cads will happily charge and discharge at 1C, meaning their rated capacity for one hour. Using that rating, a 14Ah battery like most of our bikes could be fully charged from "dead" in just one hour, using a 14 amp charge rate. Most lead-acid batteries don't do well with a charge rate of greater than 0.1C, so the same battery would take 10 hours to charge because you could only use a 1.4 amp charge rate. (If you are in a hurry, a 0.2 or 0.3C rate can be used, but it's not as good for the battery.)

The charge rate on our bikes is not adjustable. It is actually rather amazing that out batteries last as long as they do,
given the loads (charge and discharge) to which we subject them.

.
 
I know they use big NiCads on airplanes just fine, jets, piston poppers, and turboprops. Some of the turboprops will completely drain the NiCad in about three start attempts, they get fully recharged in a minute or two once one engine is running, so if it is done correctly in a properly designed system NiCads can work. These batteries last many years. The trick will be getting the bike's system to act like it was designed correctly.
The little RC NiCads are 1.2 volts per cell, ten of them in series would make a 12 volt battery pack. Eleven of them would be 13.2 volts, closer to what the charging system runs at, would this work better than ten of them? Would some resistors or a rheostat in line with the batteries better control the voltage? Maybe an adjustable voltage divider to adjust the voltage at the sense wire of a Honda regulator? Would a separate additional regulator need to be designed to apply just the right voltage to the battery? Need a little help from our electrical engineer buddies. How would one determine what capacity each cell should be? Small ones would be easier to put on the bike, under the seat or in the tail or someplace.
The 550/560 hybrid clone cafe racer will be needing something like this.
 
Last edited:
tkent02 said:
I know they use big NiCads on airplanes just fine, jets, piston poppers, and turboprops. Some of the turboprops will completely drain the NiCad in about three start attempts, they get fully recharged in a minute or two once one engine is running, so if it is done correctly in a properly designed system NiCads can work. These batteries last many years. The trick will be getting the bike's system to act like it was designed correctly.
The little RC NiCads are 1.2 volts per cell, ten of them in series would make a 12 volt battery pack. Eleven of them would be 13.2 volts, closer to what the charging system runs at, would this work better than ten of them? Would some resistors or a rheostat in line with the batteries better control the voltage? Maybe an adjustable voltage divider to adjust the voltage at the sense wire of a Honda regulator? Would a separate additional regulator need to be designed to apply just the right voltage to the battery? Need a little help from our electrical engineer buddies. How would one determine what capacity each cell should be? Small ones would be easier to put on the bike, under the seat or in the tail or someplace.
The 550/560 hybrid clone cafe racer will be needing something like this.
Click to expand...

Nicads will accept charge even more rapidly than previously mentioned, 3 or 4 C (15 -20 minutes from dead to full charge)(even considerably higher rates than that under some conditions), but I suspect they are not a good choice for your intended application (smoothing out the R/R output, but not starting the bike)

Although they will accept charge rapidly, once they are fully charged, putting any more charge into them damages them rapidly. The problem is that once charged, they "peak" and the voltage declines, which (with our style R/Rs) would tend to cause them to overcharge rapidly and be damaged (unless there were enough cells in series that they never became fully charged, which MIGHT be do-able ... I don't know enough to speculate)

If what you want is the "three start attempts" capablity described above, you could probably get that with NiCads, but you would need a special charger for them. (i.e. not our R/R system)
It may (or may not) be possible to get such a system to also do the "smoothing stator output" function as well.

But assuming all you want is the smoothing, I suspect that the way to get that would be either via capacitors or a MUCH smaller lead acid battery.

Given that you don't intend to use the battery for starting, I suspect you could go much lower than 14 AH, possibly by a factor of 10 or more.
I have seen some very small sealed batteries used in alarm systems, which might work well for that. (battery volume and weight will scale with capacity, so less AH capacity will be smaller)
I don't know how well those will tolerate the output of the R/R system, but I suspect it will be better than NiCads.

The other alternative would be the use of capacitors.
This has definately been done, and apparently at least sometimes succesfully. ;)
I don't know any details, though I remember occasionally reading in the forums here about people doing so.

On the minus side ...
I have read several stories on the forums here of people blowing the main fuse (which disconnects the battery) or intentionally running the bike without a battery (and no other changes). At least some of them ended up blowing out their igniters. (OTOH, others apparently managed to remove the battery and run the bike successfully without damaging anything as far as they could tell)

So there definately are risks.

I have no real answers for you, but some things to think about ...
 
I ran my '69 Norton Atlas for a number of years with no battery. It had a magneto for spark, and an alternator for lighting. I have run my Norton commando for years at a stretch with a dead battery, it has a starting capacetor. About 15 years ago I installed electronic ignition, and now I need a battery with at least 10.5 volts or the spark is erratic. That is less convenient.

Lots of snow mobiles don't have batteries, but they have lights, heated grips, etc.
 
850 Combat said:
I ran my '69 Norton Atlas for a number of years with no battery. It had a magneto for spark, and an alternator for lighting. I have run my Norton commando for years at a stretch with a dead battery, it has a starting capacetor. About 15 years ago I installed electronic ignition, and now I need a battery with at least 10.5 volts or the spark is erratic. That is less convenient.

Lots of snow mobiles don't have batteries, but they have lights, heated grips, etc.
Click to expand...

Nortons had different systems, what works for them won't necessarily work for us. And a snow machine designed to have no battery is different yet again.
 
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