How much juice?

[Kennichi]

Hi

I'm going to be charging AA batteries off the XT600 , but my question is this if I use say a 2hour charger on 4 AA 2500mah batteries on the XT how may watts or Amps will this take up? ,

I am pretty certain that charging AA batteries will not use as many amps or watts as heated grips, but it would be nice to know so I can consider just how much I can charge off the bike (I'm actually thinking of x2 AA chargers with 4 batteries in them each as the camera sucks those batteries dry , and we are probably going to use LED camp lights which are not as attractive to mozzies as fuel burning lights all which need AA batteries).

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

[Tenere Tom]

You realise that putting a 1.5V AA onto a 12V supply won't do it much good.

I hope you have a voltage regulator of some sort. If not they could explode

[Kennichi]

I have a car/wall combi charger that plugs into a cigarette socket and thus this normally being 12volts in a car should step down the voltage appropriately to 6volts , if it comes to it I can wire them all up in series so that I have 1.5volts x 8 and thus it will suck the 12volts ok probably maybe...


Though I am bringing one of those £10 solar panel things from maplins as last night a few XT riders I met did have them on and said they are useful as a backup if you kill the main battery.

[Flyingdoctor]

Just plug in your charger whilst your riding and it'll be fine. I've been doing this for years on a variety of bikes without any problems.

[aukeboss]

That is 8 batteries each 2500 mAh charged in 2 hours ...

So you will be needing nett 8 x 2500 / 2 = 10 000 mA = 10 A. But assuming an efficiency of 50 % of the battery chargers, that would be 20 A.

Guessing that your alternator produces max 300 watt, you will have 300 /12 (volt) = 25 A available, so there is only another 5 A available for ignition, lights etc.

I would use one charger at the time - that reduces the drain to an acceptable 10 A, leaving 15 A for your household.

Auke

[pottsy]

I ran a pair of 2000 mA/h AA rechargeables off a Maplin-bought charger on my xt6e with no probs, but i wasn't riding at night and not using my day-running light during the charging. A, say, 4/5hr charge seems to power the batts for my camera just fine. Works for me

[thetallyhoman]

very simply........ the batteries you want to charge are 2500mah when full

at a 2 hour charge you'll need half of 2500 times 4 batteries
(4 x 1250 = 5000) or 5 amps....... Aukeboss is 100%...

now if you wanted a longer charge say 4 hours, you could have more batteries (8 of them) without in drawing more current.

if you want to be completely satisfied, get a multimeter connected to the 10A terminal, (or 20A if you can get one)
then connect the multimeter to the inverter or whatever drain you have connected to your bike, and measure the current draw with one battery then two and so on
the way to wire it is to consider the positive and negative probe of the leads as one wire connected by the box (multimeter)
then disconnect one of the connections on the load, then reconnect them using this new wire with the box, select 10A on the multimeter and take your readings.
personally Aukeboss is right.... beware too much current draw. a 2 hour charge brings high current draw.

[Kennichi]

Oops I bought a 90 minute / 2 hour charger yesterday it came with x4 1000mah batteries, and I have some 2500mah batteries too...

I looks like per battery it will suck 1650 mah per hour, x 4 = 5 amps, ie 6600mah or 7amps for inefficiency lets say 10 amps...

Leaving 15 amps for running the bike itself, I think I'll therefore charge 3 batteries at a time and using say 5.5 Amps leaving plenty for the bike to run on.


I'm glad I bought the XT600 instead of the funky TT600 now in that the TT600 only has 120 watts coming out of its jenny!

Thanks!

[Jens Eskildsen]

I've tried to use a 100W headbulb instead og the original 65W

The battery werent getting drained, so no worries. Allthough the light was a bit yellow due to the small wires.

I think the manual for the 1990 xt600 says something around 180W of production.