| Author | Message | ||
     Pwillikers |
Now that its cold and dark early, I've cranked up my Widder heated vest and have the high beams on for much of the commute home. My '09cr with the harness upgrade doesn't keep up with the load unless I'm constantly over 6K RPMs. Those of you '08 owners, how much of a load can your charging systems carry while still keeping the battery happily charged? Any difficulties with heated clothing? | ||
| Froggy |
No issues with heated gear and other accessories on both a 08 and 09, I rarely exceed 4000rpm too. | ||
| Stimbrell |
Really, but so many here say if you run below 5000 rpm you are a brain dead moron, stupid beyond belief, because everyone knows you must run these motors above 5000rpm at all times, it says so on Badweb. Sorry, have I missed something? | ||
| Froggy |
Yes. | ||
| Stimbrell |
OK, actually that's mildly entertaining but I hope you actually get my point. Honestly I don't really care, the bike is a piece of shit, totally unreliable and can not be trusted at all. | ||
| Sprintst |
1st gear for everything except highway passing, where you use 2nd  | ||
| Froggy |
The only point I've gotten is that you have nothing to contribute to the forum, you just come here to whine like a baby day in and day out. I find it quite humorous actually, I always look forward to you coming into threads whining about how you sound like Harley murdered your dog and burned down your house or whatever it is that is on your mind today. | ||
| Alaskacr |
If the harness is in-fact designed to open one leg of the stator above idle, it stands to reason; you cannot maintain a charge without keeping the revs way up - you are operating on two-thirds power. | ||
| Zac4mac |
Stimbrell - take mine from my cold dead hands. 27k miles, all services, 2 valve checks, done by me. Never a problem, strongest, fastest, most reliable bike I have ever owned. downside? Any issues I had were fixed quick... I took 2 3k+ roadtrips on Loretta with no problems except falling asleep at the wheel. I saw dinosaurs on I-76 and woke up.... Zack | ||
| Nattyx1 |
Alaskacr: what you're describing might be technically correct, but it's wrong-thinking -- in terms of the point of view. We shouldn't HAVE to worry about where the revs are for charging just like we shouldn't have to squirt oil on the valves with a pumpcan while riding or push the clutch with our foot. Those days are gone ... for every other model of bike... It's like trying to cure a headache by putting on a hat... Running up the revs might mask the problem but it'll cause others (gridlock traffic, summertime, and we're "idling" at 3000 rpm to help the stator and riding at no less that 5grand all the time... so engine temps spike... hard parts swell and burn and headgaskets start to go...) The actual issue we're facing is NOT one of insufficient charging power commensurate with load due to too slow rotation of the armature (directly correlated with engine speed). A good example of a "normal" analog generator system displaying this syndrome is like the one on the clapped out 59 VW Bus I had in college for a while. The idle would drop to about 47 at stoplights (kidding, but it felt that way) and all the lights would dim down lower than a vintage acetylene lamp ... yeah a generator and stator different I know but the point still makes sense, no? Anyway, a low charging situation (from the former example or from, say, a bad connection at a terminal, or a faulty VR) would mean the battery is drained by the load and then bike... soon... quits. Fix that small part or connection, and voila you're back riding. Easy peasy because the basic design and execution of the charging system's main parts are sound. In the pantheon of moto/automotive faults, a pesky charging problem rectified by baking soda on a terminal or swapping a cheap VR is a "reasonable," "expectable" and/or "normal" problem to have. The issue we're facing is that a big, expensive, INTERNAL part that is the core (literally) of the charging system -- the stator -- burns itself to death. This creates the low, then quickly non-charging situation. It does so under what are 100percent NORMAL RIDING CONDITIONS that EVERY OTHER MOTORCYCLE SOLD in the world seems to be able to handle just fine. We could do 24/7 pony express shifts around death valley on a gsxr750 (for example) in 6th gear at 45 miles an hour tlll we ran through ten sets of tires and the stator would STILL be working per spec. THAT my friends is what is not OK about all this. Our bikes have a design flaw that should be rectified by a fresh rethink, new parts and a product recall. | ||
| Stimbrell |
Froggy, I do find your love for a company that is treating 09 up 1125 owners so badly to be most puzzling and for owners who have bikes with no issues, I really do feel good that you have been lucky and I hope that luck continues and you can fully enjoy your bike. | ||
| Reepicheep |
Nice summary Steve. This is one that for sure Harley should have made right by now. | ||
| Froggy |
Stimbrell, if you think I love the MoCo, you are sorely mistaken. Their treatment of Erik, the various Buell companies, and many owners over the years is inexcusable. Not everything was roses and flower for me either. | ||
| Alaskacr |
Natty - Wasn't trying to justify it. I was restating the (what should be) obvious - the harness bandaid just causes other problems. It doesn't make it all ok. I agree too that a bike with torque across the rev range shouldn't have to be operated solely in the upper half to keep the battery charged. | ||
| Timebandit |
I'm glad to see that there are people like Steve who are willing call a rose a rose, but I'm not sure that all of the blame should be placed on the guy who has been left holding the bag. The sad truth is that this bike has a major design flaw: The Buell/Rotax engine design completely ignores basic engineering principles relating to managing thermal loads. First, they built the stator into a "hot box" configuration that traps all heat and includes no effective design for air or liquid cooling. Then, once the stator is doomed to fail in the confines of a hot box, they add insult to injury by hooking the stator up to the cheapest, most low-tech, type of regulator available, a shunt regulator. The shunt regulator places the stator into a 100% duty cycle, which forces it to run at full power output at all times, regardless of whether the power is needed or not. This generates a LOT of unnecessary heat, and that heat is trapped in a hotbox and has nowhere to go. Any freshman engineering student can recognize this design is a horrible recipe for thermal failure. Regardless of whether the fault lay with Buell or with Rotax, both companies should have been smart enough to recognize the problem and avoid it in the design stage. Buell should have realized the problem when they did their due-diligence in collaborating with Rotax in the engine design. Apparently Buell didn't, because the Aprilia problems that were already well documented didn't effect the Buell design specifications. Rotax definitely knew about the problems in their Aprilia designs, and Rotax didn't bother to fix them for the Buell motor. Why? Probably because Buell didn't specify a fix as part of the engine design, and Rotax didn't want to redesign the motor fix the problem unless they had to. Rotax built the motor to Buell's specifications and the rest is history. One side effect of this collaborative design effort is that somebody gets to sell lots of expensive replacement stators. Who is responsible for this? Was it Buell, was it Rotax, or was it both? Was this an accident or was it intentional? Either way, somebody now has a good revenue stream selling replacement parts. P&A is a major profit center for everyone involved. The funny part about this is that everyone is blaming H-D and nobody is blaming Rotax. Rotax dodged the bullet. Again. Perhaps this was just a design oversight. Design oversights happen all the time. If Buell had survived as a company, they would have had an opportunity to design a proper solution ... either by changing the basic design of the Rotax motor to eliminate the hotboxed stator or by applying a band-aid type oiling solution. Then they should have hired a qualified EE to design a proper regulator, instead of just sourcing a POS shunt regulator from Ducati. In all fairness, they probably just chose the Ducati part out of expedience and didn't pay a lot of attention to the charging system when they first designed the bike. The unfortunate problem is that H-D was having it's own economic problems, so H-D chose to shut Buell down, which basically eliminated Buell's opportunity to acknowledge and fix their own mistakes. Who's left to pick up the pieces after Buell's major league design error? BMC is gone. Rotax isn't even being blamed for the problem. Rotax has no incentive to spend millions on re-designing the engine, so they're happy to sell replacement stators instead. H-D is left holding the bag, and they're just trying to cut their losses so that the MoCo doesn't go under in a tough economy. Everyone is in survival mode. It's really difficult for me to pin the blame on anyone other than BMC. The bottom line is that BMC screwed up the design, and BMC is now out of business. Rotax is hiding behind a tree while H-D takes the blame and H-D doesn't even care. What to do? Our only hope is to look to the aftermarket for a solution. Maybe some smart end users will put their heads together and come up with the fix. Personally, I'm glad to hear that EBR is trying to solve the problem with an improved oiling system. Getting rid of excessive retained heat is definitely a good idea. Another good idea would be to get rid of the shunt regulator, which is a really stupid idea to begin with. A series or a switching regulator would prevent the stator from operating at it's full rated output at all times, and would really help to decrease the heat retention problem by not generating a lot of the heat in the first place. Less heat generated, less heat retained, less heat to be dissipated with improved oiling. | ||
| Black |
"Who is responsible for this? Was it Buell, was it Rotax, or was it both? Was this an accident or was it intentional?" Could it have been Aliens? Well, we know that the point about the regulator being a shunt type is true, at least. C'mon...admit it... it was fun to read. | ||
| Sparky |
FYI, it looks like Aprilia has stepped up to the plate by warranty replacing 500 watt alternators on certain models with lower rated 370 watt units if I'm reading that right. It must be nice when your motorcycle company is still in business. When I picked up my bike from getting its second stator and VR replaced under warranty, I asked the service manager about installing 2008 components if this stator goes out in the 2 years remaining on the extended warranty. He said he's heard that H-D has done that before for other late model 1125 owners and that if I wanted to go that route to call H-D Cust. Svc, to plead my case for authorization. Don't know if he was just blowing smoke my way or not, but maybe there is hope that H-D will eventually do the right thing to fix these things? | ||
| Rt_performance |
good luck Sparky. According to hd customer service . "this has never been done and where not sure these parts are even compatible" I asked for badweb members who had this done to get me a copy of there invoice for proof. Nobody did. The few who did respond where done out of dealer slush funds or partial customer parts purchases. | ||
| Mickeyq |
HD seemed to have some money as they spent more to shutdown Buell than they had ever invested in it. Also, when they returned MV Agusta to the Castiglionis, they gave them millions... | ||
| Court |
(Message edited by Court on November 13, 2011) | ||
| Timebandit |
>> "It must be nice when your motorcycle company is still in business." That's significant, isn't it! It would be interesting to have the inside track on whether the fix was something designed entirely by Aprilia, or whether Rotax stepped up and fixed the problem. The reason that I ask this is because if Aprilia fixed the problem, then we'd have to rely exclusively on BMC/HD for a solution. In contrast, if Rotax fixed the problem there could be hope for us that a solution would be forthcoming from Rotax/HD. Something to think about -- Rotax is owned by Bombardier, a company that is famous for making powersports engines for snowmobiles, jet-skis, and aircraft, and more recently motorcycles. I don't know about the aircraft engines, but I'm pretty sure that the motors for snowmobiles and jet-skis all use rotor/stator designs that are of the "hotbox" design. In sub-freezing weather a snowmobile engine has pretty good thermal gradient for cooling considering the ambient air temps are so low. In a water-cooled jet-ski application, there's plenty of thermal gradient for effective cooling as well. I don't know about the aircraft engines. In the motorcycle applications, the Rotax motors are being run hard for extended periods at higher ambient air temps, where the hotboxes have less effective cooling. Just speculation here, but I'll throw out a question in case anyone might have the answer -- could the problem with stator heat retention due to lack of oiling in our motors be a result of the fact that Bombardier is used to designing engines for cold weather applications where heat retention isn't such a problem? This might explain the oversights related to ineffective cooling of the rotor/stator on our bikes, on the Aprilia, and on the Spyders. Just a thought... | ||
| Dennis_c |
No problem with 08 1125 stators. I will have one for sale in about 2 weeks + most of a motor bad piston, 2 valves, ex cam | ||
| Oldog |
P willikers : I have run my gloves and jacket on the '08 no apearant problem my observations my gear draws about 10 amps bike off battery volts 12.4 bike on battery volts 11.8 and slowly falling ( 1/10 v per 3 sec ) volts up over 14.7 at idle hunting between 13.9 and 14.11 I took a current reading on the bike ( engine off ) 7.2 amps ign on lights on etc. at 10.4 volt battery volts idling with a gerbings microwire jacket and gloves depends on heat setting full up pulls the volts down to about 12.5 ~ 13 from 13.7 ~ 14.11 ( this fluctuates ) as the heat control is Variable On time ( PWM? ) as you dial it up readings change voltages were taken at idle one test run where engine speed was raised to 3000 rpm volts dropped to about 13.2 13.5 ( gear was on ) even with the heat off the voltages seemed to drop to the mid 13v range at higher rpms | ||
| Zac4mac |
OK, I'll admit my previous post to this thread was heavy on the kool-aid(and a little whiskey). Seriously tho, Loretta(2008 R) has been a very reliable bike her whole life. I have never had an issue with the electrics. When concerns were running high on the subject of insufficient charging output in early 2008 I did a bit of testing on my own. Aside from a couple of heat related tests I did in my garage, I made a run up to Cheyenne, WY and back with high beams and heated grips on high the whole way. It's a 150 mile round trip at 80 mph in 6th and I had zero issues. I do keep a tender on her most of the time and I still have the original battery. Today's supposed to be up to around 50 dF and I intend to get her out for a little riding. Looking forward to it. Since the EBR kit is essentially the same charging system I have with a cooling enhancement, I heartily recommend it to any of you with 09/10 models. Zack | ||
| Timebandit |
@olddog, i'm not sure what test conditions you were using when you generated some of those numbers -- the test conditions aren't entirely clear to me. i hope that you realize that when the voltage drops, it means that the load that you've placed on the charging system has exceeded the charging system's output under those test conditions. that means that you are running the accessories off of your battery, not off of the stator. if that condition persists you'll deplete the limited storage capacity of a motorcycle battery in no time. that's particularly problematic when idling at a stop-light with high load on the charging system. with the wrong load it would be possible to deplete the battery in a matter of minutes. the bottom line is that if you experience voltage sag, then you've overloaded the charging system and you need to back off on the system's load. | ||
| Timebandit |
@Zac, I've looked at the power output of the 2008 charging system as a function of RPM. It pretty much plateaus at it's maximal output by about 4000 RPM. In other words, if you're doing 4000 RPM or better then you're going to enjoy the near-full output of the charging system. At highway speeds, with heated grips and bright lights someone who doesn't lug the engine shouldn't have any problems. If you were idling for a long, that could cause trouble. Heated grips draw about 3A maximum, which isn't all that much power compared to things like a heated vest/jacket, gloves, pants. On a highway ride at reasonable RPM I would think that the combination of heated grips and bright lights wouldn't stress the charging system at all. In trying to answer the OP's question, I'd recommend adding up the power requirements of all of your gear and determine the total load that you plan on putting on the bike, and make sure it doesn't exceed the charging system's rated output. Then I'd watch the charging system output voltage to make sure that it doesn't sag below the voltage levels required to keep power flowing into the battery instead of being drained out of it. The last thing you'd want to do is to subject your battery to a constant drain condition. That's a recipe for sulphation and shortened battery life. | ||
| Dannybuell |
How would a second battery for gear, off the charging grid work for a full day of riding? | ||
| Timebandit |
Danny, I thought I already answered that question, but I'll try explaining it a little better with some numbers. Hopefully that will help you get a better grasp of the situation. > "when the voltage drops, it means that the load that you've placed on the charging system has exceeded the charging system's output under those test conditions. that means that you are running the accessories off of your battery, not off of the stator. if that condition persists you'll deplete the limited storage capacity of a motorcycle battery in no time." > "The last thing you'd want to do is to subject your battery to a constant drain condition. That's a recipe for sulphation and shortened battery life." Let's do some math. Suppose that you want to run heated grips, gloves, jacket liner, but no pants: Grips = 50W Jacket liner = 100W Gloves = 25W Without pants, you're looking at 175W just for the heated gear that you'd like to put on an auxiliary battery. (I won't address the problem of where to put that battery.) 175W / 12.8 V = 13.7 Amps Your typical MC battery is rated at 12 Amp-hours. 12 Amp-Hours / 13.7 amps = 0.878 hours = 53 minutes. Using the heated gear at full output you could completely discharge an auxiliary battery in your first hour of riding. If you use a PWM controller you might be able to spread the heat out over more time, but you're still going to beat on your battery pretty hard, possibly taking it to full discharge. If you insist on trying this you'd better go with a deep cycle battery. The math demonstrates that chemical storage of energy via a battery is not a practical method of powering heated gear. You really need to be able to use the engine to generate the power that you need in real-time. The bottom line is that to run heated gear you need a bike with a charging system that was designed for it -- something that has enough grunt to generate all the necessary power in real-time. Something like a BMW with a 750W alternator would work fine. Unfortunately, the 300-400W charging system for our bikes was never designed with these kinds of loads in mind. People who insist on running heated gear can get away with it if they're like Zac and use realistically light loads. But if you want to load the shit out of your charging system then you're just asking for something to fail. edit: fixed a typo (Message edited by timebandit on December 17, 2011) | ||
| Dannybuell |
THX Timebandit. | ||
| Dannybuell |
Timebandit ~ We have all learned a bit more about the design flaws in this system. how would you raise the bikes electrical potential? 2 batteries clearly isn't it, Could the belt drive tensioner pulley be replaced with a pulley that had generator hub internals? http://www.sjscycles.co.uk/schmidt-son-delux-disc- dynamo-front-hub-silver-prod22239/?src=froogleus&c urrency=usd |
