Bloody electrical problem

[davepm13]

Hi all,

My NC30 battery just won't hold a charge.

I'm considering changing the battery, Reg/Rec and the Generator. As I understand it there's a better option than the standard battery. Can anyone tell me what it is and the code(???).

Battery's that poor it won't hold charge long enough to even get my bike to start. Admittedly it has sat for a few weeks but the battery has been fully charged before putting it back on the bike to start.

Dave.

[Lope]

It doesn't sound like you know exactly what the problem is by your reference to replacing the battery, gen and the reg/rec.
Get a multimeter and measure the voltage at the battery terminal while idling. As I roughly remember my NC24 makes about 13v at 1300rpm, 14v at 1800rpm and about 14.4 to 15v over 2200 rpm.

13.5-13.8v is a standby/float charge which will slowly charge the battery. 14.4v is a cycle/fast charge. and 15v is an equalisation charge which causes a lot of gassing, and will charge each cell to their maximum potential and may sort out undercharged cells.

If the battery has been sitting in a discharged state for an extended period its likely to be sulfated. (sulfate crystals on the plates preventing charge/discharge) Either you can take it into your battery shop for recycling (free) and get a new one or you can try recondition it. It sounds like your battery is quite fsked though. My old battery (which I regard as reasonably fsked) charged up to its full functioning capacity (which wasn't much) after only a few mins, and would hold enough charge to start the bike for 2 days :)

Always use safety glasses and have a box of bicarbonate of soda ready to neutralize acid if you spill it on yourself!
The 2 ways of reconditioning are chemical and electrical. Chemical is easy and the most thorough, dump the acid into a container, put a heaped table spoon of EDTA (quite cheap from a chemical supply/science lab company) in a litre of hot distilled water, and leave it in the batt over night. That will take the sulfate crystals off the plates. Rinse it out with normal water a bunch of times, then with distilled once or twice, shake it out. Then if you have a hydro-meter (from auto store) check the acid solution is 1280. U can get battery acid from the auto store, and distilled from a chemist(drug store etc). Fill it up and cycle charge it, then equalisation charge it for an hour or so.
Always charge it with the levels at the max.
The electrical method is with a desulfator, you might be able to buy one somewhere online, but they take a long time.

I was going to try the EDTA recently but I saw some of the plates on my battery were bent and I tried to straighten them with a screw driver, big mistake, the spongy lead plates are extremely fragile, if the plates are warped and touching each other it means the battery is probably fsked too, but give the EDTA a shot anyway and let us know how well it worked :)

You can use a 7 amp hour battery, I've fitted a 9Ah battery to my NC24.

[wullvfr]

like has been said charge the batter @5000rpm,the voltage should be between 13.5-15volts.usually 14volts is the norm.

another test is to test the voltage output of the alternator,the readings should be 50volts between the yellow wires and this test is also done with the bike idling at 5000rpm.this test though is done with the multimeter set to ac volts.


wull

[davepm13]

Thanks for your help guys.

Turned out it was the battery. Even when fully charged (according to my Optimate) it just didn't have enough charge. That combined with my bike not having been started in a while certainly didn't help.

Have now replaced the battery and spent yesterday out playing on th NC. Happy days.

Thanks again.

[Neosophist]

Motorbike batteries do have a hard life, keepign them not charged doesn't help... short journeys with the lights on is a good way to discharge them too.

http://www.electrexworld.co.uk/pdfs/Tro ... G-&-RR.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This is a good diagnostic for checking all of the charging system in a logical order.

If you run the bike with a bad battery it tends to fry most of the charging system. :) it might be useful as a reference doc.

[Lope]

I set my bike to idle at 1800RPM, at that speed the battery will charge :)
(i must check it again to see if it works with the lights on)

[Neosophist]

You can use a 7 amp hour battery, I've fitted a 9Ah battery to my NC24.

The NC24 has 9ah battery as standard (YB9L-B)

The NC30 has a smaller battery YTX7A-BS I think.

The Idle speed for the NC24 is 1300rpm. It won't start charging the battery with lights on till about 2500rpm.

Setting a high idle is pointless, it uses more fuel than necessary. At idling the battery will provide the power.

Charge the motorcycle battery every 2 weeks to keep it in good condition and do not leave the bike 'idling' for long periods of time.

If you do lots of very short journeys on bike it might be worth charging the battery more often.

[Lope]

If I had my own garage I'd put a connector on it somewhere and plug it in every time I park it.