Parasitic Draw - healthy range?

[Lucky Phil]

Nonsense. But, suit yourself I guess.

Well I'll put your experiences in the "under review" file for future decisions. You may well be right and technology moves forward usually.

 

Ciao 

[Lucky Phil]

Ok so I ran a seperate fused hot wire to the headlight and a return earthed to the engine block along with the regulator earth as suggested by Kiwi-Roy. Made the reg earth to engine block heavy cable. All fitted up quite nicely so now the headlight switch is only low amperage relay control.

Happy to say the headlight circuit voltage is now very stable with only 0.04V drop from battery to the reg sensing point with the headlights on or off and a maximum regulator output of 14.1 Volts with the original reg.

Should be kinder to the battery.

Thanks to all that helped.

Ciao

[czakky]

Noticeably brighter?

[Lucky Phil]

Noticeably brighter?

Cant say, I hardly ever ride at night and when I do its always city/suburban stuff.

 

Ciao  

[Stick]

FWIW, any time my bikes are parked for extended periods, I use a battery maintainer, by Schumacher (Walmart ~$20).  But after having my garden tractor battery go flat over the winter many years ago, I now use these chargers along with a 24hr timer.  Every day, the timer turns on the charger for about 2 hours. 

 

If you've played with these charger maintainers, you might notice that after they go into the float mode, if you disconnect and reconnect, it starts charging again (and then will finally go back to float mode after many minutes).  

 

What's happening?  The charging mode uses 1.75A, and brings the battery to 14.4V.  Then goes to "float", where it goes into a 1mA trickle mode.  This small charging state actually lets the battery settle back towards 13.x volts.  When unplugged and reconnected, the charger "sees" that it's not up at 14.4V, and resumes the cycle - charge to 14.4, and then float.  

 

The timer essentially does this for me, every day.  It gives the maintainer a "fresh look" at the battery.  And goes thru it's cycle.  BTW, the timer is about $3 at wally-world.  

 

I get over 10 years out of my batteries doing this.  Wet-cell car battery in the "nice car", AGMs and also wet cells in the bikes.  And I don't disconnect or remove the batteries over the winter.