What do you do if your battery dies...
 

Theoretically --- if you're out in the middle of nowhere and you've managed to boil the battery dry :oops2: what can be done to extricate yourself from the do-do..??

My LC4 has a rather large capacitor under the tank that is supposed to let it run without the battery, but ... I dunno fo'sho'

So - if your battery's cream-crackered how can you modify the electrics to get you home?

Greg

Pour hot water over the battery, kill all lights and don't use the e-start.

get a new and proper Gel-battery, fit it in advanced, before you do a trip, preventing it from going dry in the first place... the benefit is that you end up with a higher Amp that way which is an advantage.

depending on what model year your LC4 is... depending on size, a 2003 LC4 with plastic battery carrier would cope with a:
TECNO = YTZ10-S
L:150 x W:85 H:93 / 12volt - 8,6AH / 190A

a LC4 before 2003 like the 2002 with a steel battery carrier need a:
GEL.type: SHIM YO = YTX11-BS
L:150 x W:87 x H:105 / 12volt - 10Ah / 175A

the standard battery and size of a 2002 LC4 is
Std.size: L:152 x W:88 x H: 106 mm
Std.type: Hi-Q = YTX9-12BS/9-12B / 12volt - 8Ah
Varta = 50812

so, why not spending £50 quit, upgrading your LC4 before you run in to trouble... had a faulty acid battery one's which was unable to hold the charge, I was unable to start the bike, had to disconnect the head light just to make use of the little bit charge that was left and kick the bastard in to live to bring me home, road that way about 250Km, luckily it was summer and still daylight when I arrived.

originally my LC4 "used to be a 2002", but with a lot of mods, it's now on a stage of a 2003 upwards.. to be able to use the later type battery, I converted the battery carrier to the plastic one as well... now with all the options and benefits that come with the latest upgrades up to the 2005 LC4 bikes, did cost me only a few more quit.

My battery was poor and died in central asia so I got in the habit of finding somewhere 'high up' to camp and then jump starting it every morning, I could cycle enough charge through it to keep the bike running but it woulod lose it all overnight. I had fitted a dash voltmeter because of ducatis reputation for electrics but all that did was tell me how shafted I was!

I had a magneto on an old triumph that worked fine, no battery required at all but I'm not sure how that would work on a newer bike

Whither the kickstarter???
 

Whither the kickstarter???

I think that's almost the most important deciding factor on any bike I buy for long journeys to far-away places.

Other than that I think it's been answered.

Except:
carry jump leads - in the UK you can get them lighter and smaller than for cars, designed for motorbikes.
Before you depart, learn to bump-start your bike, especially on level ground (there's not always a hill). I find a lot of youngsters are completely unable to do this, but I'm lucky, having learnt to do it in the 60s when road-races started with a dead engine.
But you have to remove all the luggage and gizmos (well, I do), to make it as light as a 750 Norton!

Finally, I've only recently started using gel batteries (they're a bit new to me!) and have been told if you let them discharge a significant amount (maybe through an alarm) they won't last very long at all.
Anyone have any views on that?

Thanks for replies so far ...

Spooks, yes in an ideal world that's a solution, in fact my 400 has the battery from my old 950Adv 'S' in it right now...

But my question was kinda hypothetical... I was looking for an option for a battery eliminator, or something you could connect in place of the battery - which is what the capacitor does on my little Katy..

So - if the battery's buggered to the extent that it doesn't take charge will it still conduct electricity? What if you just junk the battery altogether - what potential damage could be done to other parts of the electrics? Crank, the LC4 has the kickstarter on the wrong side of the bike for some unfathomable reason and is a complete b!tch to start on the lever ...


I think Henry's solution is halfway there, but somewhat hill dependant!



G

That's true.

When they start to get weak (for whatever reason) they don't take charge very well and die fast. I wouldn't used it for an extended trip in remote regions but I love it for my enduro-bike.

Kickstarts are all too rare these days, people want the 'convenience' of just pushing a button instead of the obvious and less obvious benefits of a kickstart. By less obvious I mean that you can 'feel' how your engine is - the italians need caressing!

I'm in the process (a very very lengthy process) of building my 'dream' travel bike. It's got a 1985 ducati pantah bottom end and casings from a 650, complete with kickstart, but the cylinders and barrels from a mid 90's 750 monster and hopefully some aftermarket kehin 45mm carbs. Having the kickstart should be really really useful but I've already nearly snapped my ankle kicking over the old 650 engine so god knows if I'll even be able to start the engine with the larger capacity setup.

Inn theory I'll end up with a very sorted sub 200kgs (including extra tank and pannier racks etc) bike chucking out 85 odd HP with ohlins at the back and marzocchi at the front with ohlins internals. In about 4 years!

It depends on your bikes electrical system.

My racing bike, must have a battery to power the computer or it won't start.

Other bikes will run off the magneto, they only need a capacitor to smooth out the voltage and filter out the peaks.
If this is the case, your capacitor parallel over the battery will enable you to run the bike without the battery and all light etc, off.

If you want to be sure, you could install a small backup battery, charged but isolated from the main battery.

Agreed it is a shame that bikes don't come with a kickstart as well.

I have both on my Ural and it makes such a difference when your electric starter stops working for a year, and when you finaly strip it all down you find it was just sticky relay

Hypothetically speaking, of course...:innocent:

In ye olde days we used big capacitors as battery eliminators, and on the simple electrics of the day they worked ok. Lights etc were poor, but it ran. Magnetos sounded great, but as someone who had to fix the things - regularly - they were a long way from perfect. "Reliable" in those days was "anything over 500 miles without breaking down and stranding you in the middle of nowhere".

aside....
Did you know that 650 Triumph engines were rated as 30,000 miles before a complete rebuild?

Sadly most modern bikes won't start/run without a working battery. All the electronics need the juice nice and steady, and all the time. The good part is that they are generally VERY reliable, and rarely fail.

Remember that if you can't find a replacement battery that's just right, a small cheap car battery will work just fine. Strap it on the back somewhere with some big well-insulated leads and you're good to go. If your charging system isn't working a decent car battery will run a bike all day with ease. :mchappy:

How many amps at 12V does one need to run a modern bike? Is it possible to use a solar charger, from which one can get about 0.4A at 12 V to run a bike (without lights, obviously) in which the battery has died?

Without lights but with a functioning generator, it will run forever, even without solar chargers, but if the battery is disconnected you need a capacitor to filter out spikes that might kill your electronics and it could be very difficult to start the bike in the first place.

The question is, if the generator is dead, and therefore the battery too, if the battery is left in place to act as a capacitor, would the output from the solar charger run the bike without the lights on i.e. would it power the fuel pump, injectors, ecu and ignition system?

No, a solar panel of the size you describe is not able to keep the bike alive, not even the ignition.

It still depends on the bike. How much curent it needs. There are many roadracingbikes that run a total loss system, i.e. without a generator, just a charged battery, but then they don't run all day.

In the tropics, you might be able to get away with solarcharging 10-11 hours and then maybe run the bike for 4-5 hours.

How is that ???
wrong side ??
I'm confused...
that's very new to me... a LC4 is one of the most easiest 600+ bike to start with a kickstarter... "well if done right" even without the decompression leaver or snapped cable.. done that for over a year before I had the pennies to get the free-wheel-gear repaired... even did a trip to Scandinavia that way with a non working free-wheel-gear.

absolute no problem starting the bike with the left foot sitting fully loaded on the bike, just find the dead centre, push the leaver ones more down half way after that, let it come up again and give it a good kick and off you go.

Even now with the e-starter fully working again, do I use the kickstarter if the bike is cold, in the morning to prevent the e-starter from getting used more than necessary or worn down... only use the e-starter if the bike is warm, using the e-starter when the bike is cold puts a lot of strain to the starter and battery.

The solar panel is a cute idea .. lol...

The ignition and other bits will prolly consume 30-50 watts, so you're looking at about 4 amps - and you'd need a bank of solar cells 54cm x 64cm according to
Maplin anyway ...

Anyway - back to the original question, I'd aimed it at simply the battery failing with the generator still functioning and producing stable voltage.

This brings another question, if the VRR had died, then the generator will be making unregulated output (cooking the battery in the process) but will that output run the bike?? Will the dead battery be sufficient to hold down the voltage ..?

As I said, I'm just harking back to the days of my old - batteryless - Puch Maxi that ran quite happily and gave lighting... Being able to adapt a more modern electrical system to run without a battery would be quite handy if you needed it to ..


Or do you just pack up and go home...:nono:

G

Hi Spooks ...

Most kickstarters are on the RHS but as I said the LC4 is on the left - likewise they're back to front with the chain drive too, but they resolved all that with the EXC didn't they ...

Mine's a 400, and I junked the decomp system because it wasn't needed, and the arm on top of the valve inspection cover got in the way of my twin fan conversion - but it was always hard to start, and just plain awkward - to say nothing of wrecking the side-stand spring if the stand was deployed at the time ...

I changed the carb on mine from the sh!tty dellorto to an FCR 37 - it made a huge difference to how the bike ran - still hard to start though lol..

G

well sounds like you got a ex-military LC4 than.... :)
now that you removed the decomp valve arm is not needed, a pity you junked it.. I fitted the rallye fan KTM part-no: 58535041044 on to the RH radiator as a twin fan conversion, without any interference of the decomp arm, only had to turn the condensator at a 45 degree angle.. that's it.

about the side stand... do you need that for starting the bike ?
OK I have long legs, so I'm sitting on the bike and kick... while my mate with his XR650 has to use the side stand and standing on the pegs to get here going...

Don't know about it being ex-military - it came in good old KTM Orange! Now it has a big tank and silver plastics though ...

http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o...s/IMG_9111.jpg

If the dead battery is "cooked" i.e. without water, it will not conduct any current, it will be open circuit and if the voltage regulator is shorted, then you will "cook" all your electronics because of too high voltage, you might get by, in an emergency, by turning on all the lights blinkers etc, to keep the voltage down, but most voltage regulators have the rectifier incorporated, so if everything is burned, then you might have no voltage or only AC and modern electronics won't work on AC.

Some enduro bikes only produce 55W with a headlamp of 35W so ignition doesn't use much on these bikes. To find out how much current is needed, connect a multimeter in the A (current) position, in series with the battery lead and start the bike on the kickstart (the electrical starter will burn the fuse in the multimeter, or the meter itself) and see how much current is used and then calculate how big a backup battery you need.

A little research shows power consumption for FI system is between 1.5-5 amps x 12 volts = 18-60 watts depending on bike, fuel pump etc.

So a solar power system can indeed supply enough juice to run the bike, lights off; the voltage is a little high at 17 volts but connecting via a battery that is not so pooched that it has infinite resistance should run the bike....

LOL indeed!

I might rig this up just to prove the point....

So this would provide enough power to run the bike without the lights...

http://www.earthtechproducts.com/p2008.html

Seriously......Pee In It!! there will be enough acid in there to make it work with urine till you get to somewhere that you can rinse the cells amd refill.

I don't think my aim is good enough for that !beerchug

I think Grant has provided the only sensible answer so far to this problem.

I had a cell die in my battery in Russia 2 years back. Although I was able to eventually get a jump start (I have no kick start and the CVT on my bike will not allow you to roll start), the bike only ran for 100km further before it died completely. I was most fortunate in having a passing local stop and assist me. He had a bike in the back of his FWD and by some miracle the battery from that bike fitted mine.

The problem is that with modern FI bikes, the FI shuts down if it is receiving < 11 volts from the battery - even though the alternator is pumping out 14+ volts.

I pulled all fuses to non-critical electrical components (lights etc.) but the bike still wouldn't stay running until I put in a good battery with all cells functioning - even though the replacement battery was a lower AH rating it still worked fine (ran all elecrics including the electric start) for 5 days until I could replace it

So how does the FI/ECU 'know' that the voltage is coming from the battery or the alternator? 12V is 12V no matter where it comes from...

Urine could work
 

For the record. Urine is usually around PH 6.0 so it is acidic, this could actually work as urine is also distilled by the kidneys. Although urine has salts and is not demineralised so it is not ideal but still it's a good point. Has anyone used urine to recover a battery?

The trouble is if the batter is either sealed or gel then urine wouldn't be even a temporary solution.

Incidentally on this topic of Urine, it can be used to relieve pain from box jellyfish and bluebottle (also know as Portugese man-of-war) stings due to the high quantity of amonia.

references:
pH - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jellyfish Sting Treatment - Will urine relieve the pain of a jellyfish sting

I honestly don't know the answer to that question, and I wish I did. If there any auto-electrical boffins on the site I'd be very pleased to hear from them.

I'm not a boffin by any means and ,at the risk of being proven wrong ,would venture to say that ;
the battery has to supply some voltage to energise the alternator in order to produce a charge .
If battery voltage is too low , this will not happen ,the alternator will not provide sufficient charge and the battery will discharge itself quickly .Any momentary boost from another vehicle will only have a short lasting effect .On a modern bike and especially one with FI , you need a good battery -period - full stop .
If there were a permanent magnet alternator on the bike [which is self energising] you would PROBABLY be OK as the alternator would provide 14 v regardless of the battery condition and keep the bike running once you have found a way to get it started in the first place .
A battery with a bad cell will never charge successfully as it will always draw the good cells down to it's own voltage .

Theoretically ,I have never tried this , you could use some flashlight batteries to energise your alternator and then tow or bump start the bike .
After a long enough tow ,with the engine spinning over ,the system might reach the critical voltage for the FI to kick in and give it life .

Or

You could try this .


YouTube - Emergency Starting Technique

Now I really am confused! Not sure what you mean by 'energize the alternator' - as I understand it, this is a magnet rotating around coils of copper wire which induces an electrical current in the coils due to the changing magnetic flux - it is 'energized' by physical motion of the magnetic field around the coils of wire and does not need a primer charge. The resulting AC is then converted to DC by the rectifier and the voltage regulated to 14 V or so by the regulator which is upstream of the battery and FI/ECU. How does the ECU distinguish between 12V that has come from rectified and regulated AC off the alternator as opposed 12 V from some other source applied across the battery terminals, be that other batteries or solar charger? Dunno and in fact I'm not convinced this is the case....

When I checked the power rating of fuel pumps, they came out at between about 2 and 10 watts depending on the size and flow rate; also need enough juice to activate the injectors and run the ECU as well as generate a spark in the plugs, perhaps 20 watts or so. Should be possible to generate this by a number of methods....

There are two kinds of alternators generally fitted to bikes .The one you have just described is a permanent magnet rotor alternator [ with actual magnets ].
Like the old Lucas alternators fitted to Brit bikes .

The other kind uses electromagnets [coils] to produce the north and south poles of the rotor ,these act like physical magnets when spun around a stator .This kind has to have a reasonably healthy battery voltage in order to work .

A good explanation Dodger - it sounds logical to me.

Sadly the emergency starting technique in the video will only get you so far down the road if you find yourself in my situation though. My battery died on the Khabarovsk - Chita corrugated gravel road. I had stopped 10 minutes earlier, started the bike without problem but stopped again to collect fresh water from a stream. As soon as I turned on the ignition I didn't even have enough power to turn the engine over (pressed the starter button and the LCD instruments faded to black). As it was late afternoon I pushed the bike off road, set up camp and waited till next morning to get back on the road. With a jump start the bike started instantly and I thought all was fine again - and it was, until approx. 100km down the road the motor just died and the instruments faded etc.. After flagging down the friendly local the bike would restart but die instantly the jumpers were removed. As soon as the battery was replaced the bike electrics ran perfectly again.

I can only assume the battery failure was due to the corrugations killing a cell as prior to that the battery had worked flawlessly for around 5 years in all road and traffic conditions. If it had simply been that the battery was getting old I would have expected some sort of early warning rather than an instant failure - as an example the bike had been shipped from Australia to Korea and had not been started for around 2 months - yet it had started instantly when I had uncrated it in Busan 2 weeks earlier.

A little strange explanation but as you said, if the voltage is lower than 11V, the bike won't start and you'll never get 14V from the generator.

Otherwise the voltage on the battery will always be the same as on the generator or there is to high resistance in the cabling.

Just the thought of battery acid on my bell-end is making me wince:eek3:

Ok, so acid burnt bell-ends aside, the question still remains..

You're out in the middle of nowhere, VRR Uckfayed, Battery Boiled...

Could you - theoretically - locate a 12v battery from somewhere, and hook it up to the bike, disconnect the alternator (on account that you don't want it to fry the replacement battery either) and run on battery power alone until you get somewhere you can source replacements?

G

Yes, but it won't last long if the lights are on and some bikes have lights on all the time (N America).

Yaaa agreed, I forgot to add I - hypothetically - would have disconnected all unecessary ancillaries too ...

G