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Will bike run without battery?

  • Thread starter Thread starter davewallen
  • Start date Start date
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davewallen

Guest
I finally got my r/r installed..(&^*&*#!!!) I went to measure the voltage, and got 18.5. Smart me, I measure straight from the r/r, and get 14.5. So, I guess I go get a new battery tomorrow.

But for giggles, I started the bike and tried disconnecting the battery. Instant death.

Shouldn't the bike generate enough to keep itself running without the battery?

(81GS850)
 
No electrician and only a half @ss Mechanic Here, but to My Knowledge NO, the bike will not Run without a Battery installed.
 
Theoretically yes although you run the risk of burning out the regulator without a battery as the system will still be putting out enough juice in trying to charge the battery.
 
Thanks. Went and got my new battery. Now to give it a day and see if everything is working ;-)
 
Yes, the bike should run without a battery installed, subject to the number of RPMs involved as there must be enough engine speed to turn the stator fast enough to generate the power needed by the ignition system as well as any lights that are ON.

Doing this for any extended time is not a great idea.

On the other side, the bike will run without the charging system connected, and if the R/R totally fails you can disconnect it and still drive the bike on battery power alone.


Regarding the numbers mentioned:

The stator puts out well above 18.5 volts, but you only see those numbers if you check the leads going into the R/R from the stator.

If you are finding that voltage anywhere else, at any time, you are guaranteed to have a short-life battery, and other components will also fail prematurely.


14.5 volts is the maximum acceptable output from the R/R, but if you have the standard complement of electrical items for your bike, and th ebattery is freshly-charged, this voltage indicates poor connectors somewhere, and increased draw due to corrosion/dirt, etc., or it means you have a poor R/R, as 14.5 volts should not be constant and will boil the battery dry, AKA fry it.
 
I thought the battery on a GS was part of the system, they won't run without. Those that do have some kind of capacitor in them I believe....
 
argonsagas said:
Regarding the numbers mentioned:

The stator puts out well above 18.5 volts, but you only see those numbers if you check the leads going into the R/R from the stator.

If you are finding that voltage anywhere else, at any time, you are guaranteed to have a short-life battery, and other components will also fail prematurely.


14.5 volts is the maximum acceptable output from the R/R, but if you have the standard complement of electrical items for your bike, and th ebattery is freshly-charged, this voltage indicates poor connectors somewhere, and increased draw due to corrosion/dirt, etc., or it means you have a poor R/R, as 14.5 volts should not be constant and will boil the battery dry, AKA fry it.
Click to expand...

Yup. I had 18.5 from the battery. Even when it was disconnected. They gave me a warranty replacement, though. Sure did seem like an odd number - enough to make me check my VOM on a another source.
 
Not my 82 650G...

Not my 82 650G...

battery drained too low or disconnected and the bike dies. Otherwise, I'd not have gotten stuck on the side of the road with a crapped out charging system when the battery ran down. MAYBE if I disconnected the headlight/tail-lights, but I seriously doubt it.

I think there's large capacitor on bikes that don't have electronic starters (you know, the ones you have to kick start) to keep the engine firing. The GS bikes don't have it.

Sorry.
 
After some thinking, I've figured that a bike SHOULD be able to run on the charging system without a battery.

After all, the battery is supposed to be only for starting.

Anytime the bike is running, the charging system should be supplying enough power to run everything and STILL have a little left to recharge the battery. If it doesn't supply enough to run the bike, then you're always pulling from the battery, and sooner or later you're dead.


Haven't tried with my new RR yet.
 
Uh, folks, with the battery out, where is the electrical earth ground? That would explain why it won't run without the battery. :-|

As an aside, I've tried to put this off until we've had time for an adequate shake-down, but we over at Riders Of Vision had a spate of stator and R/R failures recently, so we are in the process of designing a new 'BUCK' regulator, one that charges the battery until full, then switches off the power coming from the stator rather than shunting it to ground. Any of you interested in trying one as, possibly, a Beta tester? It's being done in CO. And if someone has the basic wiring diagram that is common to the GS models, we can incorporate that into the design. The old Suzuki's and Yamaha's charging systems were much the same... :)

I'll be getting one for both my GS750 and my Vision. If noone here tries it themselves, I'll provide a report...:wink:
 
ironb12s said:
Uh, folks, with the battery out, where is the electrical earth ground? That would explain why it won't run without the battery. :-|

As an aside, I've tried to put this off until we've had time for an adequate shake-down, but we over at Riders Of Vision had a spate of stator and R/R failures recently, so we are in the process of designing a new 'BUCK' regulator, one that charges the battery until full, then switches off the power coming from the stator rather than shunting it to ground. Any of you interested in trying one as, possibly, a Beta tester? It's being done in CO. And if someone has the basic wiring diagram that is common to the GS models, we can incorporate that into the design. The old Suzuki's and Yamaha's charging systems were much the same... :)

I'll be getting one for both my GS750 and my Vision. If noone here tries it themselves, I'll provide a report...:wink:
Click to expand...

I ground my r/r right to the neg terminal of the battery, so that should take care of the ground problem.

As fare as shutting down the stator when the battery is charged, what kind of threshold are you setting it at? Theoretically, the moment you shut down the output from the R/R, you are running off the battery, so therefore in 1/100 of a second, the battery is no longer fully charged, and you need to start charging again. All that switching off and on is going to generate heat, although I don't know if it would compare to the heat generated by soaking up the excess like a nornmal R/R.


I was looking at your yamaha site, and notice they have a relocation recommendation. Rather than that, (on GS) I'm thinking about mounting a computer CPU cooler on my R/R. Pretty sure they are 12V. Enough heat sink grease to form a solid heat transfer base, and I should be ok.

There a mention here that if you really want to eliminate heat from your stator, you should really try to load your bike with enough lights to fully use all the power generated: (they also explain why you should never jump your bike from a running car: while the car's 1400 watt generator/regulation is trying to keep the voltage at 14.5, the regulator on the bike is trying to use all the energy not required by generating heat , and a 1400 watt generator will win the battle every time)
http://tinyurl.com/24a6kv
 
davewallen said:
I was looking at your yamaha site, and notice they have a relocation recommendation. Rather than that, (on GS) I'm thinking about mounting a computer CPU cooler on my R/R. Pretty sure they are 12V. Enough heat sink grease to form a solid heat transfer base, and I should be ok.
Click to expand...

Excessive heat sink grease will actually create a barrier against effective heat transfer. A super thin layer to fill any voids between the heat sink and core is all that is required. More is not better.
Ask me how I know. 8-[
 
Casino Joe said:
Excessive heat sink grease will actually create a barrier against effective heat transfer. A super thin layer to fill any voids between the heat sink and core is all that is required. More is not better.
Ask me how I know. 8-[
Click to expand...

I think I'll guess. But thanks for the advice - I wouldn't have known that without learning it from an experienced pro.

Like Rodin said: "Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely."

Of course, he didn't have to replace a $100 r/r, did he? (or was it a $200 CPU?) ](*,)
 
$100 ??? :shock:

I just scored a Honda CBR1000 5 wire R/R on fleabay for $30 shipped.
Check it out, you can get deals like that quite often.
If you cant find any, contact duaneage (a GSR forum member) as he often has Honda 6 wire (sense wire) R/Rs already modded with the proper terminals for our bikes for sale for around $40.


And yes, it was a $200 CPU. :oops:
 
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A high speed switching regulator based on something like a PIC chip would work better. It will allow the system to 'trickle' charge the battery to keep it up to full power. It'll also handle surges from the Stator better, and can be set to prevent surges due to electrical shorts etc.

Well that's how I'm looking at doing it.
 
Forget that I said anything...

Forget that I said anything...

TheRedlineMan said:
A high speed switching regulator based on something like a PIC chip would work better. It will allow the system to 'trickle' charge the battery to keep it up to full power. It'll also handle surges from the Stator better, and can be set to prevent surges due to electrical shorts etc.

Well that's how I'm looking at doing it.
Click to expand...

You got it in one, the Buck regulator uses transistors, which generate no heat for switching. When they are POWER transistors, like in a stereo, they do generate heat, but the Buck doesn't use POWER transistors. :)

The line direct to the neg post, the muffin fan, where have I have seen this before? Oh yeah, it was over on ROV. :-D Even talked about oil cooling for the stator... The new regulator is supposed to cure all of the ills of heat at the stator and R/R.

But, in light of the questions, I think I'd prefer if y'all forgot about it until ROV has fleshed it out...sorry for the bandwidth... :|
 
I just ran a bike without a battery yesterday, but not on purpose.

I have a junk bike that I am using as a motor test stand. It started up, and ran, but the throttle stuck on a loose carb boot clamp. The ignition was bridged (no shutoff) because there was no power to the ignition cutoff switch. The motor started racing (not too high though). I pulled the battery charger/starter off, leaving open red and black. The motor started racing even more.

I finally tore off the ignition hotwire, which made it stop.

That was enough excitement for 1 day.
 
davewallen said:
(they also explain why you should never jump your bike from a running car: while the car's 1400 watt generator/regulation is trying to keep the voltage at 14.5, the regulator on the bike is trying to use all the energy not required by generating heat , and a 1400 watt generator will win the battle every time)
http://tinyurl.com/24a6kv
Click to expand...

Sigh ... I hate to pick nits, but I've seen several people post stuff like that, and its not quite right.

The Diodes in the rectifier section keep the regulator from being able to try to sink the excess voltage from the car, all it can do is sink all the current coming from the stator, which it is quite capable of doing ...

However, the slightly high voltage causes some parts in the control section of the regulator to overwork themselves, and the regulator will fail.

The end result is the same, (a toasted R/R) but the mechanism is a little different.

It also really peeves me off, because it would not have been much harder (or more expensive) for suzuki to design the regulator so that this would not be a problem. The problem is in the control circuitry, which is the cheap part, not the diodes or SCRs, which are the expensive parts.

Further, It does NOT take a car to do this. It can be done with a plug-in battery charger too, depending on the design of the charger. As long as it gets the system voltage high enough for a few seconds.

even some poorly regulated trickle chargers may eventually get the voltage high enough.
 
bakalorz said:
Sigh ... I hate to pick nits, but I've seen several people post stuff like that, and its not quite right.
Click to expand...

Never be afraid to pick nits with me.. especially when I was quoting another site..

I would rather know the correct info than go though life THINKING I did.

The difference between knowledge vs. ignorance.:shock:
 
If your R/R wires are set up right - positive R/R output wire to positive battery cable (which connects to ignition wire) and negative R/R wire to ground - then you've got two voltage sources in parallel: Battery and R/R.
Start the bike with battery.
When you remove the battery, you still get voltage from the R/R, but at low RPM it's not nearly enough to power the lights and ignition.
So if you've got to ride with the charging system alone, you simply disable the headlight, tail-light, etc. and keep the RPM higher than 2000 RPM.
 
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