Alternator with higher output?

[Kiwi_Roy]

Docc,

I can't see anything different apart from the terminal strips you added, that's neat.

Do you still have a Ducati Energia regulator or something else

I can't figure out how your Voltage gets to be so high unless your regulator is trimed for a higher setpoint.

Next time you get a chance would you mind measuring the voltage at the black regulator wire to chassis with the motor running.

Thanks

Roy

[docc]

Can do.

 

Interesting looking at the old threads . . . my post wondering if a ground strap to the regulator body would be a good idea. And the post from Gary Cheek (whom I hold in high regard) that the changes I made should "help the regulator." (my paraphrase)

 

The terminal stack is a trouble maker, no doubt. The 30 amp mini fuse is problematic as well.

 

Perhaps my power distribution solution , along with the MAXI fuse is good juju . . .

[dark_bike]

Time for an update.

 

I havent been able to ride my bike for weeks after fitting the diode in the regulator wiring due to illness. However, I've been back in the saddle from early last week and things have worked a treat. Always starts on the button, no more lame battery, even after repeated short rides. In other words, it works :-)

 

Tom

 

PS I also replaced the cheapo starter motor with a proper Valeo one - makes a world of difference.

[Kiwi_Roy]

That's good news, that youre feeling better I mean.

The weather here has been mizerable this spring although I usually manage to get out for coffee on Sunday morning with the classic bike group. Two of the others claim they have Guzzies but I think they may be posers as they come in their cage. (I'm joking)

 

For those who haven't added headlight relays yet, here's a fairly easy route.

The top half shows how to test the for Voltage drop. I show the meter connected at the regulators Black wire, you can also measure between battery positive and the headlamp, it will be higher for sure. I chose the regulator point because it's held at ~13.8 when the bike is running. The Voltage drop you read on the meter is mainly in the small wiring to the dimmer switch and it's contacts.

 

You can do this test without the bike running or skip that part altogether if you aren't curious like me

 

The bottom shows how to add just one relay in the headlight bucket to boost the Voltage, use one of your old Siemens relays for this. You can have it fail to High or Low doesn't matter. I forgot to show the idiot light it's connected to the right of Hi/Low switch of course.

With a relay you should end up with around 13 Volts across the lamp fillament.

No relay base required, just buy the two different size insulated spade connectors then you can just wrap a bit of tape around any exposed contacts and jamb it in the headlight.

The advantage of this circuit , it doesn't upset the charging circuit and only needs about a foot of new wire.

Headlight Relay - Ducati Energia.pdf

[68C]

Thanks Kiwi_Roy for another excellent diagram, keep them coming.

 

Iam not sure which regulator I have on my 04 Rosso Corsa, is it easy to identify?

 

Many years ago I had a Yamaha XS750 (shaft drive of course), the handbook included a wiring diagram for (I think) the Canadian model which had a relay that automatically changed headlamp filaments should one fail, I though that was a great idea on a single headlamp bike, any chance of coming up with a diagram for that?

 

Many thanks agin.

[Tom M]

Great stuff Roy! I have the Eastern Beaver headlight relay harness installed so I might be a low charge rate victim. My bike is somewhat disassembled in my basement right now but when I get it back together I'll try and take some voltage measurements.

 

I finally got around to taking some measurements after a ride last night. Here's what I got:

 

key off = 12.9v

 

idle = 12.6

 

2k rpm = 13.1

 

3k rpm = 13.6

 

4k rpm = 13.9

 

Both the battery and the regulator are about 2 yrs old. It seems that the EB headlight relay harness might be effecting my charge rate as Roy has suggested. Is there a simple way for me to get my charge rate up without removing the relay harness or cutting the factory wiring harness?

[Kiwi_Roy]

You can boost it up by 0.6 Volts simply by adding a diode in series with the black wire.

To test it unplug the Black/White plug and turn it half a turn so only the white one is connected then take a diode wired to a M/F bullet connector and connect the other two. Something like this.

 

White-------> >-------White---|regulator|

 

Black---

- Diode

 

Sorry, it doesn't display how I want it, I will do a sketch

[luhbo]

Time for an update.

 

I havent been able to ride my bike for weeks after fitting the diode in the regulator wiring due to illness. However, I've been back in the saddle from early last week and things have worked a treat. Always starts on the button, no more lame battery, even after repeated short rides. In other words, it works :-)

 

Tom

 

PS I also replaced the cheapo starter motor with a proper Valeo one - makes a world of difference.

 

Please elaborate! What exactly works now? The new Valeo starter or the diode cheap trick? What was the cheapo starter consumption and how much does the new Valeo starter/Solenoid combo suck off in comparison? What is the average ambient temperature now, also in comparison to your winter problems?

 

@Tom M: If you realy measure 12.9V with the key off, at the battery I assume, then you have a perfectly and 100% charged battery. What more do you want?

 

Hubert

[Tom M]

You can boost it up by 0.6 Volts simply by adding a diode in series with the black wire.

To test it unplug the Black/White plug and turn it half a turn so only the white one is connected then take a diode wired to a M/F bullet connector and connect the other two. Something like this.

 

White-------> >-------White---|regulator|

 

Black---

- Diode

 

Sorry, it doesn't display how I want it, I will do a sketch

 

Thanks for that Roy. I'll give it a try the next time I pull my fairing off.

 

Hubert,

I agree that my battery was fully charged when I took those readings after a 2 hour ride yesterday. My concern is that my battery might not be getting a full charge on shorter trips at a more sedate pace. Sometimes it struggles to start after sitting for a while too.

 

What I really should do is bypass the relay harness to see if my bike charges at a higher rate without the harness, then plug in the harness and see if the charge rate drops, but it seems like Roy and dark bike have already done this. It would be nice if you or someone else here who has a stock V11 could check their charging rate just to see if the they jibe with what others in this thread are seeing.

 

I do know that the PC545 manual states that you should not use a charger that puts out less than 14.2v or more than 15v. Wouldn't it be better for my battery if my bike was charging at a max rate of ~14.5v instead of 13.9v?

[gstallons]

I think they do not want the battery charged at that rate provided there was no load or discharge being applied to the battery......

 

 

[luhbo]

Could be a good idea. It's an easy tweak, try it, why not.

It's not the voltage, it's the current that brings the charge. So what is the inner resistance of the battery once it has reached 13.9 V? As long as you don't have any numbers of the resulting charging current at 13.9 resp 14.5 it's hard to say whether it's really worth the effort. Also I'm not sure whether other risks might come with it.

 

BTW, last year I had a flat battery due to a forgotten headlight with the ignition on, so I jump started the bike. The funny thing was that the voltage didn't really go above 12V after that. I thought I might have damaged the regulator, or a already dead regulator even was the root cause. In fact it's been just the depleted battery. Once they're flat this alternator just can't deliver enough current to feed them adequately, regardless whether a trick diode is wired in or not. So in my opinion it's copper what it really needs, not silicon(e). Or maybe a slightly bigger battery.

 

Hubert

[Kiwi_Roy]

Could be a good idea. It's an easy tweak, try it, why not.

It's not the voltage, it's the current that brings the charge. So what is the inner resistance of the battery once it has reached 13.9 V? As long as you don't have any numbers of the resulting charging current at 13.9 resp 14.5 it's hard to say whether it's really worth the effort. Also I'm not sure whether other risks might come with it.

 

BTW, last year I had a flat battery due to a forgotten headlight with the ignition on, so I jump started the bike. The funny thing was that the voltage didn't really go above 12V after that. I thought I might have damaged the regulator, or a already dead regulator even was the root cause. In fact it's been just the depleted battery. Once they're flat this alternator just can't deliver enough current to feed them adequately, regardless whether a trick diode is wired in or not. So in my opinion it's copper what it really needs, not silicon(e). Or maybe a slightly bigger battery

Hubert

There is so much miss-information about batteries on the web it's hard to get it straight anymore. You ask about the difference between 13.9 and 14.5. If you look at any reasonable Voltage vs % charge curve 0.6 Volts amounts to about 30% of charge.

The idea of adding a "Trick" diode is just to restore the status quo after adding headlight relays that's all. Luigi was tricking the regulator by dropping voltage between battery and reference wire, adding relays foiled his trick

Have you checked the diodes in your regulator, not being able to recover sounds a bit like mine when one of the diodes let go.

I think the charging on the V11 is quite good when it's working as it was intended, the alternator certainly has enough capacity.

[luhbo]

 

... You ask about the difference between 13.9 and 14.5. If you look at any reasonable Voltage vs % charge curve 0.6 Volts amounts to about 30% of charge....

 

I found this one, for instance: lead acid battery charging graphs. Even at a C/5 rate of charging current the gain of % of charge between 14.0 and 14.5 is less than 5%. This chart shows the behaviour of a flat battery being cycled, btw. We usually don't cyle our batteries, at least we shouldn't. So I would take this source as another argument for questioning the need of the diode action.

 

About my battery story: the regulator is and was ok, the alternator as well. A proper but flat Hawker just means too large a drain for our alternators, at least with lights, fuel pump, injectors, lambda controller etc. on and working. And I don't have the heat grips connected.

 

The above source also has some words on what type/quality of meter should be used for such investigations, btw.

 

Hubert

[Kiwi_Roy]

Even at a C/5 rate of charging current the gain of % of charge between 14.0 and 14.5 is less than 5%. This chart shows the behaviour of a flat battery being cycled, btw. We usually don't cyle our batteries, at least we shouldn't. So I would take this source as another argument for questioning the need of the diode action.

 

Hubert

Sorry Hubert,

As I said there's so much information out there. I'm not saying the author doesn't know what he's talking about I just don't think it applies in our case. Our bikes with Ducati Energia regulators are more like constant Voltage chargers cutting off at 13.8V with the headlight relay 14.4 without, not constant current as per the article. His curves are interesting though, note how the flat part of the curve gets closer to the setpoint as the C/time drops.

I suspect we start out at C/1 and work our way up towards C/20 covering a very wide SOC band.

 

Battery Curve.pdf

 

I also suspect these curves are just freehand sketches (which is quite ok) not something that was actually plotted.

You may wonder why my 2 setpoints are different by 0.6 Volts, it just so happens that's the voltage drop I measured on my bike

from battery + to the black wire others will be a little different, some more, some less.

[dark_bike]

Time for an update.

 

I havent been able to ride my bike for weeks after fitting the diode in the regulator wiring due to illness. However, I've been back in the saddle from early last week and things have worked a treat. Always starts on the button, no more lame battery, even after repeated short rides. In other words, it works :-)

 

Tom

 

PS I also replaced the cheapo starter motor with a proper Valeo one - makes a world of difference.

 

Please elaborate! What exactly works now? The new Valeo starter or the diode cheap trick? What was the cheapo starter consumption and how much does the new Valeo starter/Solenoid combo suck off in comparison? What is the average ambient temperature now, also in comparison to your winter problems?

 

@Tom M: If you realy measure 12.9V with the key off, at the battery I assume, then you have a perfectly and 100% charged battery. What more do you want?

 

Hubert

 

 

The battery is fully charged,also after frequent short rides, thanks to the diode. The bike starts easily also at subzero temperatures. Even with a full battery the cheapo starter was struggling at any temperature of 5C or under, like it was sticking. The Valeo just spins, as if there is no big lump of a V twin to fire up. I didnt bother to measure currents so cant say anything on that. The cheapo starter was made by Alanko btw.

 

Tom