• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

lithium-ion battery first impressions

MotAd

MotAd

Husqvarna
AA Class
fitted my race battery at the weekend. have only commuted in to work this morning so far (greasy, wet and cold london roads) but first impressions are very good. takes about 3 kilos off the rear of the bike and noticeably handles better. also feels a teeny bit more powerful with reduction in weight but it's the handling that's most noticeable.

first crank on friday night (just to make sure it worked) was very fast and much more powerful than lead-acid. then this morning it cranked just like a lead-acid but maybe that's down to the freezing weather we've had here knocking the voltage out a bit. our bikes charge 14.5 volts back to the battery and that's supposed to be enough to fully charge these bad boys. apparently they fully charge in 9 minutes but that's rhetoric and not personal experience so far.

will keep this post updated with my findings over the coming weeks. it's a great way of shedding weight from the rear of the bike, especially in conjunction with a full titanium system. just need to find £1500 now for some part-carbon wheels (or £3000 for full carbon!).
 
yeah i heard that too. the bike gets used every day so should be ok. also not running an alarm or other draining things either. they're supposed to store well though. if it looks like i won't use the bike for a few weeks i'll pop it out and keep it indoors :)
 
Hey mate. Brand is called skyrich (skyrichbattery.com) and is the model to replace the ytx14. Just looked at the packaging and they're a US company based in California!

Just stuck a voltmeter on her after today's 25 mile round trip and she's resting at 13.9 volts.
 
I put an Ultrabatt 400 in and very happy - saves weight and space. Should now have space to fit a pod airfilter and eliminate the crap airbox!

Not sure the weight saving is as much as 3kg but even if it is would be hard pressed to claim I can notice the difference in handling!? But maybe throwing a SM around ...
 
Have got them on both my bikes (CCM & 630) and have run them both dry on occasions and doesn´t seem to have done them any harm. Both retained full power on a standard trickle charger. They are the future and I´d use no other.
 
i had the weight down on the ytx14 that came out at 3.7kg http://www.mdsbattery.co.uk/shop/productprofile.asp?ProductGroupID=838 my lithium ion weighs in at 800 grams so just under 3kg weight saving. another journey into work today and can def notice the difference. a lot easier to put the bike into a corner and weave through the traffic, it just feels lighter. the bike is definitely a bit quicker too.

organ donor - that's interesting to hear. they recommend not using a standard charger but my simple brain couldn't really understand that as they're fine for standard charging systems on bikes. hopefully i won't need to find out but if i do i may just whack the optimate 4 on it in that case :)

edit: i have edited this post with correct info after going back over some details
 
IMG_1098.JPG

I trust your scale and riding impression ;) I certainly think these new generation batteries are the answer - I have fitted the Ultrabatt 600 in my HP2 as well. Just makes sense all round and just as sealed batteries became the norm so too will these in time, especially in applications where weight is important and electric starting imperative. Another plus is that the battery can be fitted on its side if need be - in my case I did not but could have and it would open up even more space in the battery compartment. Also the batteries are so light they can simply be fitted using double sided tape or Velcro (I added two cable ties just for peace of mind but on my HP2 double sided tape has held perfectly!)
 
forgot to say battery was resting at 13.76 volts this morning. bike had been stored overnight in an outdoor shed and it got to about 2° celsius/35.6° Fahrenheit.

i will keep this diary going and see how the voltage behaves according to temperature and how long it's stored for. incredibly geeky but i'm quite enjoying it :cool:
 
MotAd said:
...first crank on friday night (just to make sure it worked) was very fast and much more powerful than lead-acid. then this morning it cranked just like a lead-acid but maybe that's down to the freezing weather we've had here knocking the voltage out a bit...
Click to expand...

In extreme cold I've read from at least one manufacturer of these batteries a recommendation to turn on a power source prior to starting the bike. This power drain for say 30 seconds warms up the battery enough to recover some from the cold cranking issue.

_
 
interesting stuff. will try turning the ignition on a bit earlier than usual and see if it makes a difference :)
 
13.86 volts this morning with overnight temps again very close to freezing. found this chart on another forum, apparently from the shorai battery website. gives voltage/capacity charge values...

VoltageVsCapacityLg-1.gif
 
finding some very interesting info out on this fella's post. massive credit to him. scroll down to post #259 - he explains how some lead acid chargers are suitable for lithium ion batteries if they have the ability to turn off the high voltage charging/desulphation features ie. charge at <14.5 volts. as it happens the optimate 4 dual programme i recently bought, has this feature :) organ donor - this explains your findings too :cool:

http://advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?s=99684dc6270837b0054847bb07bb8696&t=757934&page=18
 
battery had a total of about 60 hours resting time over the weekend and read at 13.8 volts this morning. temps getting to freezing at night then about 4° celsius in the day. looks to be behaving very well. be interesting to see a reading after a week or 2 of non-usage but as i don't have any holidays planned, that may not be for a while.
 
I´ve got a Moty, with cells stuck together in shrink wrap ... and a Shorai, which has the cells in a composite box. Apparently the shrink wrap cells are fast going out of fashion, but they are popular here, `cos they´re smaller. But can´t seem to be able to get them here any more.
 
I've had 2 Shorai's & both had to be warrantied... The last one I had the case bulged, not what I wanted between my legs. Using a TurnTec now, a friend is still using his original with zero problems (it looks like a mini-6 pack)
 
i was going to get a MOTY battery as they seem really nice guys and were dead helpful but opted to buy UK side as i thought if i had any problems with it then it'd be easier to return this side of the pond.

i will keep an eye on the case and make sure nothing strange starts occurring, that's a good call. so far so good though. we've got -4ºC / 24.8ºF temps coming the next few days so will be interesting to see how it handles those...
 
Both the Moty and the Shorai have been working perfectly in the CCM and the Husky 630 for over a year now. The Moty is much smaller and has the quick release plugs.
 
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