Forum

[wilf]

Evening all, i'm about to ask santa for a battery charger, but I'm wondering if I need to be a bit specific. I want something suitable for the bullet, that will also be OK for my 1.9 litre car. Those I've looked at say suitable for 1200 cc (4amp) or suitable for 1800cc (6amp). going by that I reckoned 8 amp would be good forthe car, but would it "cook" the bike battery? If so does anyone know of a charger with variable output. I don't think santa wants to spend more than about twenty-five north pole pounds.

[loco builder bri]

4amp will cook a motorcycle battery!Buy a trickle charger with an extra set of "fly leads". Store the bike connected to the charger to keep it in tip top condition. It will also charge your car but will obviously take longer but with the "fly leads" its a simple operation to quickly plug to the two pin socket.
Optimate is one of the best.
Regards Bri

[jaffa90]

Auto charger, how about a sealey autocharger6
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sealey-12v-6A ... 259a96dc42

[wilf]

Thanks Bri, looks like I'll go for a trickle charger, and if I ever need to charge the car I'll have to allow a good long time.

[wilf]

Thanks Jaffa, the sealey seems to hit the spot pricewise,and there's a dealer near me, so santa won't have to lug it all the way from the north pole.

[Leon Novello]

Most chargers these days are "intelligent", meaning they won`t cook a battery. I have a 1981 Arlec 6-12 volt charger which I can`t use on modern sealed batteries, only on the Bullet`s wet-cell battery, it won`t charge AGM , ceramic or gell types properly and might damage them. Advice from the RACQ / AA man as he fitted a new battery to my Mazda.

[PeteF]

Optimate are good. Mine maintains all my batteries from the 3AH on the Cub to the 125AH on the camper van. ,br>Ok, it would take ages to RECHARGE a big battery but for maintenance it's fine.
The rule of thumb is not to give a battery more than 10% of it's capacity. These "flash chargers" you can buy might get you out of a spot but won't do much for the battery.

[wilf]

Thanks Leon, thanks Pete. Your comments taken on board and much appreciated.

[oldjohn1951]

What you want is a Schumacher XM1-5 Battery Maintainer. It outputs at 1.5 amps, perfect for motorcycle and marine batteries and also works well overnight with car batteries. This retails for under $20 USD. I have an earlier version of it (much earlier) and it works magnificently.

[Scalyback]

Neat, two guys asking about battery chargers! I'll just copy it from the other one, YAY!




I had an army pulse charger. It's designed to stop batteries sulphating and also recovers them from nearly dead (mostly)

don't exactly remember the timings correctly but I am guessing 770ms charge, 200 ms rest (no charge), 30ms short across battery. Repeated.

It basically gives the battery a damn good internal kicking. Pop a misbehaving battery on one of them for a while, and that soon sorted it out.



I think there was a version for Ni-Cad batteries too, which took care of the 'memory' problem, where they would not always charge all the way up, but I never used one of them.

I have the Li-ion or lithium ion batteries in my bullets. Yes, very costly, but a quarter of the weight, much higher power storage and output, and can be fitted anyway up as no acid to leak out! Also... they charge from flat in about 6-7 minutes, as I left the ignition on for a weekend by mistake, and found out first hand!