| Author |
Message |
    
Kronichood
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 - 04:11 pm: | 
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I have a 2000 Blast and recently I've been finding that I need to put the battery on a slow charger about every other week.
I ride it to work everyday (short trip to and from jobs) so I wouldn't think the battery should run down like this.
I just wanted to check if this is normal with you guys before I start tearing out & replacing the charging system.
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By the way Buellistic if you see this, where did you get your shifter linkage from and how does you rear brake set up look on the other side. pic please...
(Message edited by kronichood on April 29, 2008) |
Blake
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 - 04:26 pm: |
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How old is the battery? That would be the first suspect. |
Kronichood
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 - 04:52 pm: |
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New, about 2 months old, a gel cell v-twin. |
Bad_karma
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 - 04:37 am: |
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Wayne
How far are your rides? Welcome to BadWeb.
Joe |
Reepicheep
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 - 08:32 am: |
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On my M2 anyway, a fully charged battery would run the bike (with headlight) for about 80 miles or so before the bike would just flat out not run. I suspect it would not have turned over after 40-60 miles or so, but I was not going to strand myself finding out. Do your commutes between charges add up to about 40 miles?
Fire up the bike, let it settle into a nice low idle, and put a volt meter across the battery terminals. Rev the bike up and see if the volts climb just a little. That will tell you if the charging system is trying to charge the battery or not.
I think the volts will go from something like 12.2 with the bike not running (depending on state of discharge and other factors) up to 13.8 or 14.2 when you are over 4000 RPM.
If the volts go up with revs, the bike is trying to charge the battery.
That doesnt rule out things like bad grounds or internally broken cables, but its a good first test that can tell you a lot. |
Kronichood
| | Posted on Friday, May 09, 2008 - 02:46 pm: |
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Thanks guys sorry I haven't checked the boards in over a week, I haven't had a full day off in over a month. To answer Karma's question my rides are very short. Morning and afternoon ride is about 3-5 miles each way and my evening ride is only about a mile to and from my second job.
Thanks Reepicheep I've misplaced my volt meter, but I think I'll just run out to Radio shack and buy another. No sense wasting anymore time looking for it. |
Bad_karma
| | Posted on Saturday, May 10, 2008 - 12:37 am: |
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Wayne
These bikes need a good 20 to 40 minutes run to keep thinks running correctly. Maybe taking the long way home will help.
Joe |
Tone
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 13, 2008 - 07:42 pm: |
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I would propose that you mount the voltmeter such that you can read it while you are riding... If your charging system is having an intermittent problem, this will help you to observe it.
My S3 has a generator, not an alternator, as does the XB. Is this common for all bikes? I'm a motorcycle newbie so I don't know... but in any case I am assuming that the Blast has a generator, not an alternator.
If you have a generator, observing the system voltage is a good idea in general, especially if you are troubleshooting an actual problem with the charging system. A generator puts out maximum power (for a given RPM) all the time, and it is the job of the regulator to 'burn off' excess power by shorting it to ground. As a result, the regulator tends to get rather hot, and in my humble opinion, is as a result more prone to failure than your average piece of electronics. When a regulator goes bad, it may stop shorting out any excess power, thus allowing the full output of the generator to hit your system. This 18 + volt output of the generator is generally not a good thing for components which are designed for 12 to 14.8 volts... 18 + volt output will burn up your headlight and may quickly destroy your battery to the point where it can't hold a charge anymore. I had this happen to me, and I was lucky in that my battery survived it, as did my bike's ECM. I'm assuming the ECM maybe has it's own built in voltage regulator so it is more tolerant of excess voltage. anyway. I digress...
It is easy to know if your charging system is working or not - if you observe the system voltage, it should be above 14 volts the entire time that the bike is running, unless of course your generator can't quite put out enough power at a low idle speed, in which case you will see the system voltage dip down a little bit at low idle speed. As long as the system voltage stays _above_ the battery voltage, then you are _not_ discharging your battery. If the system voltage drops _below_ the battery voltage, then you are discharging your battery. Obviously, the battery can only donate so much blood before it has no more to give. Per the below chart, as long as the system voltage stays above 12.6 volts, then your battery is not being asked to donate anything meaningful to the system.
Observing the battery voltage is a little tricky. First off there is 'surface charge' which as I understand it is the voltage potential of the 'surface' of the plates inside the battery. The surface charge can supply a very limited amount of power, after which the 'regular charge' mechanism of the battery, as I will call it, must supply power.
If you apply a heavy load to the battery for 30 or so seconds, you will consume the surface charge. You could do this perhaps by cranking over the motor two or three rotations, (the starter draws a tremendous amount of power) or leaving the headlight on for a minute. (The headlight power draw is timid compared to the starter.)
After burning off any surface charge, then you can get a useful reading of the battery voltage.
It is not clear to me if a surface charge can develop while the battery is resting -- I would assume not. However, a surface charge will certainly develop while the battery is being charged (such as by the charging system.)
To get a useful reading of the battery voltage, you have to allow the battery to rest for at least 15 minutes (preferably longer) after it has been charged. This will allow the battery voltage to stabilize.
It is not clear to me if surface charge will dissipate if you allow the battery to sit for a while. I would assume that it would go away after the battery rests for a while.
In practical terms, after you ride the bike, check the battery voltage say an hour later. If you have a good (or even a cheap) digital volt meter, you should be able to see once the battery voltage has stabilized... it will stop going down from one minute (or second) to the next...
Then check the battery voltage again in another hour or two or ten or whatever. If you see that the voltage keeps going down (significantly,) every hour... then that is a good indication that something is draining the battery, or perhaps the battery is just draining it's self.
Regardless of the state of the battery (with surface charge, without, immediately after having been charged, or not) you can always check if something is draining the battery using an amp meter. Shut the bike off, unhook one of the battery cables, and hook up your amp meter between the battery cable and the battery post... the reading you get should be *extremely* small. When you're done, don't forget to hook up the cables on your multimeter back to the volt measurement plugs... If you forget to do this and you try to measure voltage with the cables in the Amp measurement plugs, you will destroy something, possibly yourself.
If you do check the Amperage, you should try to use a multimeter that is rated for up to 10 Amps, as it is not uncommon to have a draw of several Amps on the battery, even when the vehicle is shut off. (If the vehicle is shut off, there should be no Amp draw to speak of, only a few mA, but I say it is not uncommon, because in fact, there may be a heavy amp draw for a few seconds or even minutes if some piece of electronics like a car alarm or something is going wacko, or if there is a short, or whatever. So to avoid burning out your multimeter, try to get one that can handle 10 Amps.
In general, at an ambient temperature of between 60 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit, a lead acid battery's state of charge can be determined from this chart. Any measurement of a voltage above 12.60 volts would be considered a surface charge:
volts / state of charge
12.60 = 100%
12.45 = 75%
12.24 = 50%
12.06 = 25%
11.70 = 0%
As you can see, per this chart, roughly every 0.01 volts above 11.7 volts represents one percent of battery capacity. The above voltage values may be a little high or low by a couple of tenths of a volt or so depending on the battery technology in question (AGM, etc) but you get the general idea.
Sorry that this is not at all a concise post, but I hope that it is useful.
(Message edited by tone on May 13, 2008) |
Bad_karma
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 14, 2008 - 12:50 am: |
|
Wayne
Have you resolved this charging problem?Go through with Reepicheep trouble shooting.
Joe |
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Charging System