Batteryless Starter for Full-Size Bikes

Thirty-five years or so ago, when motorcycles were first equipped with
electric starters, manufacturers left in place the foot ("kick") starter.
When the battery was too low to electrically crank, the machine usually
started easily with the foot starter. To my knowledge, foot starters are
no longer on full size street bikes. 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.
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. 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. If you watch old war movies, look for the
hand crank "inertia" starters fitted on some old airplane engines. It's
remarkable that a very large displacement engine can be started with a
simple hand crank via a flywheel, clutch, and reduction gear. As applied to
motorcycles, it might take the form of a foot lever coupled to a light
flywheel with a large moment of intertia. The operator would "wind up the
flywheel" with a few repeated strokes of the foot lever, then, actuating a
clutch, couple the spinning flywheel to the crankshaft via a compound
planetary reduction gear. This design would crank the engine through a few
revolutions, roughly the same as one normal electric starting event. 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.
This would greatly reduce motorcycle battery size and weight as well as the
electrical demands when starting. It would also always guarantee the
capability of turning over the engine no matter what the state of the
motorcycle battery.

Would the riding community accept this low physical demand batteryless
starter as a complete replacement of the automotive type system in current
use? 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?

 

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...

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...

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...

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...

No, they wouldn't. And, most people would probably think you're just a
troll for coming up with such off the wall ideas...

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...

 

My 1962 Triumph TR-4 had a hole in the grill for a hand crank, and
there was a unidirectional ratchet-looking gizmo on the front end of
the crankshaft to engage a hand crank. I don't remember if the car
actually still had its hand crank when I bought it. But batteries and
electrical systems have come a long way since then...

(Say! I'll bet none of you young whippersnappers has ever heard about
British motorbike electrical systems being so bad they used to joke
that Lucas was "The Prince of Darkness", and if you hear the name Lucas
nowadays, you probably think about Obi Wan Kenobi saying, "Use the
farce, Luke", and Darth Vader saying, "I'm your father *and* your
mother, Luke. You're just a silly clown clone.");-)

 

Do you have a hand-crank starter on your car?

I had an old vincent once.... and I seem to remember the name lucas on
that bike..... does my memory serve me correctly? I haven't had that bike
since the early 80's....

fwed

 

If it had an ammeter on top of the headlight, it probably had the Lucas
logo on it and the needle probably twitched a lot...

 

Geez// now you re pickin my brain... i really cant remember.... when i
bought it... the guy i bought it from drilled out the engine cases and
needless to say, he broke one of the inner walls in the case rendering the
bike useless... unless you had an extra set of cases... so for 300 bucks...
i picked the bike up and started putting the engine together.. never got the
bike totally finished.. as i sold it for almost 3 grand to use the money as
a deposit on a corvette...(along with two other cars i sold along with it)

Fwed

 

krusty kritter wrote:
snip

Can you disclose the reasoning behind the above statement?
How does battery fluid get low in the first place?
Does this mechanism differentiate between the water part and the
sufluric acid part of the mixture?
Stated another way, does the mechanism causing the lowered electrolyte
level change the composition of the remaining fluid, assuming that we
make the measurement at the same state of charge, temperature etc.?
How?
Thanks, mike

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Wanna bet?

Oh. I'm an old whippersnapper, so as you were ;-))

 

For the same reason they don't put cranking handle points on cars any
more, you unsung genius.

 

"The Older Gentleman"
message

Not old enough to have ridden one. BUT Old
enough to remember my late cousin David who in the
late 60's acquired 2-3 military triumph NIC and
made choppers out of them. I wasn't supposed to be
in ear shot when he'd be cussing the electrical
system. 8^) IIRC he worked out some bodge that
eliminated the whole problem...being 4-5 at the
time well. I didn't have a clue. Now I know better
than to own a vintage bike with Lucas electrics no
matter how much I want a Vincent.

 

Thank God they aren't on them anymore. Everyone I know that had one had
dropped their bike at least once in attempting to use it somewhere.

B~

 

<<Snip>>

I can think of a third reason. With a battery powered ignition, how much
juice is going to the coils when there's no juice in the battery?

 

British motorcycles? You've gotta be kidding...

 

If you need a new battery every year, I'd suggest that your charging
circuit is fritzed.

My Duke's on its original battery (1997 model). So's my Trophy 1200
(2001 model).

Batteries last for *years* if looked after.

 

Heh.

"Jeez! Looka that! Fifty-five an' she's still got more to come!"

'Hey, what about Dobbin?'

"Oh ****....."