Nomen Nescio wrote:
> Does anybody know the reason why this convenient back-up means for
> engine starting is no longer employed by the various manufacturers?
I can think of two reasons: weight and cost.
Are you the same troll that was posting about a gyroscopic flywheel and
two wheels on the back of the motorbike a few months ago?
The kick starter was omitted because it was redundant. And the kick
starter lever inconveniently hits the rider in the calf. About 1979,
Yamaha supplied the kick starter lever stowed away and the splined kick
starter shaft had a rubber cap over it. After that, none of the major
Japanese manufacturers equipped their big road going machines with a
redundant kickstarter...
The electric start system works just fine if the rider is aware of
proper battery maintenance...
I would have to say that 99% of all owners DON'T KNOW ANY BETTER than
to add distilled water to a battery that is fully charged but is low on
electrolyte...
They wouldn't run a garden hose into their gas tank if it was a gallon
low on gasoline, they wouldn't add a quart of water to their crankcase
if it was a quart low on oil, so why do they think they should add
WATER to the electrolyte in their fully charged battery, diluting its
strength and lowering its cranking capacity?
As I explained yesterday to the Honda rider who probably has a sulfated
battery, conventional wisdom---and it's perfectly sound conventional
wisdom---is that you should never add ACID to a battery. That's right,
you don't add ACID to a fully charged battery, you add the correct
mixture of 50% sulfuric acid and 50% distilled water ELECTROLYTE to
your fully charged battery when it's low on fluid...
It's too dangerous for users to mix their own electrolyte from pure
sulfuric acid and water. If you pour water into pure acid, the water
will boil immediately and you'd get splattered with pure sulfuric acid.
As you tried to wash the acid off, the water you tried to flush the
acid away with would boil. You'd get chemical burns and be SCALDED at
the same time...
How do I know all this? I worked in a United States Air Force battery
shop. We had HUNDREDS of aircraft, fire truck and ground support
equipment batteries in the shop at all times...
My job included walking around the rows of batteries that were on
charge and turning up the voltage on the batteries as they came up to
charge and resisted the voltage from the power source. We didn't have
one charger for every battery, there were big copper bus bars running
across the ceiling and cables came down to the manual rheostats that
controlled the voltage to each battery...
I would check each battery with a hydrometer. I had two containers of
fluid with me. One container held distilled water. I added WATER to the
batteries that were low on fluid as they were still charging. The other
container had 50/50 electrolyte. I added ELECTROLYTE to the batteries
that were finished charging but were low on fluid...
I could tell which batteries were done charging because no current was
flowing into them and the electrolyte specific gravity was correct. So
I would add ELECTROLYTE of the same specific gravity, not WATER which
would lower the specific gravity and reduce the cranking capacity of
the battery as well...
A skilled journeyman mixed fresh electrolyte in a 500 gallon tank,
wearing a rubber apron, rubber gloves, and a plastic face shield. The
boss wouldn't let me mix electrolyte, it was too dangerous.
Battery manufacturers don't want this liability either. They want to
sell you a new battery as often as you're willing to buy one...
You could go to a good auto parts house and buy a gallon of pre-mixed
electrolyte for a few dollars. It would last you for years. You'd have
to hide the box of electrolyte from the kids...
But the battery manufacturers don't even tell you this simple fact
about adding electrolyte instead of water. They would rather sell you a
dry charged battery that has been charged up, but is supplied without
any electrolyte in it...
They supply a plastic jug of electrolyte with every dry charged battery
and the maintenance free batteries too. You fill up your own
replacement batteries. It's no big deal and not all that dangerous,
unless you get a little electrolyte on your clothes and it eats holes
in them. Fresh water washes away spilled electrolyte safely. And, there
is always a little electrolyte left in the jug after filling the
battery. I save that electrolyte to top up my battery after a long
ride...
My batteries last for years and years. One maintenance free battery
lasted *eight* years. One flooded cell battery lasted *five* years. If
your batteries are lasting very long, it's because you don't know how
to maintain them...
> However, this is offset by the difficulty in trying to push start a
heavy
> bike in the absence of a downgrade. I know I am just not strong
enough to
> do it.
Got jumper cables and a car battery? One thing to know about motorcycle
charging systems is that they work best with a fully charged battery in
good condition. The alternator is an automatic device, it's alway
hooked to the battery, and if you get the engine started from a car
battery, it will try to charge your dead motorcycle battery as well as
trying to charge the car battery if it is partially discharged, too.
The total load of TWO batteries on that poor alternator may be too much
for it...
> A third possible reason that crossed my mind is kick starting was
> becoming more difficult with larger displacements and higher
compression;
> however, there is a workaround
Yes, I have seen WW2 movies where the crew chief would use a crank
handle to spin up the starter on the Rolls Royce Merlin engine...
> I think an "inertia" type starter could be made no heavier or
> more expensive than an electric starter and could actually replace
> the electric starter.
The key word here is "think". The self-appointed task of the naive
"thinker" is to appoint tasks to those who they suppose are less
brilliant than the "thinker". Somehow, in their plodding way, the
supposedly less intelligent engineer is supposed to develop the
mechanical product suggested by the genius "thinker's" idea. But it
would help if the "thinker" understood the machine he hoped to improve
upon...
When WW2 started, the conflicting armies were still using horse drawn
wagons and horse drawn artillery. They even used horses to pull their
aircraft out of the hangars. They operated from grass airfields where
they needed large tires to keep the airplane from sinking into the mud
and getting trapped. I remember reading a story where a German pilot
landed to rescue two friends in a downed Stuka behind Russian lines on
the Eastern Front. He knew that his friends would probably be shot by
the Russians, so he landed the Stuka and got stuck in the mud...
The engines of WW2 aircraft needed self contained starters like the
inertia starter you mentioned, or the Coffey shotgun starter you may
have seen in "Flight of the Phoenix". Imagine giving motorcyclists a
few shot gun cartridges. Do you think they wouldn't be lighting them
off to see them go BANG?
The last airplane I ever worked on that had a shotgun starter was a
B-57 Canberra bomber built under license by Martin. Big cartridges.
They looked like oil filters, and they spun up a small gas turbine that
spun the main turbine of the B-57's engine. They produced a huge cloud
of black smoke...
But most of our jet engines and reciprocating engines were started by
the
electric starters you despise so much. The airplanes didn't carry huge
batteries, the batteries were just big enough to be a reservoir for
excess
current supplied by the alternators. If an engine flamed out in flight,
and the pilot couldn't windmill the engine by nosing the plane down, he
might get one engine started using the battery, but there were no
guarantees that the battery would have enough power...
We normally started the engines from a gasoline engine driven generator
set.
I worked in the aerospace ground equipment shop, too. We had hundreds
of generator sets and compressors and hydraulic pumps to service the
aircraft...
We had come a long way from having to pull airplanes around with horses
only 20 years later. I never saw an airplane get stuck in the mud
either...
> Would the riding community accept this low physical demand
batteryless
> starter as a complete replacement of the automotive type system in
current
> use?
No, they wouldn't. And, most people would probably think you're just a
troll for coming up with such off the wall ideas...
>If not, should the various manufacturers at least supply a
> conventional foot operated back-up starter to use when the battery is
too
> cold, in a discharged state, or simply age/vibration degraded to
perform
> its function?
Yes, they should definitely have the internal kick starter mechanisms
in the engine cases, any idler gear involved in the kick starter system
should NOT idle on a spinning transmission shaft, and, if the rider
chooses to leave his kick starter lever at home should have that
option, if he thinks his electric starter will work just fine with a
well-maintained battery that he knows enough to add ELECTROLYTE to when
it's low...
Similar Threads
Linear Mode
