Batteryless Starter for Full-Size Bikes

Discussion in 'Motorcycle Technical Discussion' started by Nomen Nescio, May 10, 2005.

  1. Nomen Nescio

    Nomen Nescio Guest

    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?
     
    Nomen Nescio, May 10, 2005
    #1
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  2. 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...
     
    krusty kritter, May 10, 2005
    #2
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  3. 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.");-)
     
    krusty kritter, May 10, 2005
    #3
  4. Nomen Nescio

    fweddybear Guest

    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
     
    fweddybear, May 11, 2005
    #4
  5. 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...
     
    krusty kritter, May 11, 2005
    #5
  6. Nomen Nescio

    fweddybear Guest

    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
     
    fweddybear, May 11, 2005
    #6
  7. Nomen Nescio

    mike Guest

    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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    mike, May 11, 2005
    #7

  8. Wanna bet?

    Oh. I'm an old whippersnapper, so as you were ;-))
     
    The Older Gentleman, May 11, 2005
    #8
  9. For the same reason they don't put cranking handle points on cars any
    more, you unsung genius.
     
    The Older Gentleman, May 11, 2005
    #9
  10. "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.
     
    Keith Schiffner, May 11, 2005
    #10
  11. Nomen Nescio

    B. Peg Guest

    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~
     
    B. Peg, May 11, 2005
    #11
  12. Nomen Nescio

    Charlie Gary Guest

    <<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?
     
    Charlie Gary, May 11, 2005
    #12
  13. Nomen Nescio

    Les Guest

    British motorcycles? You've gotta be kidding...
     
    Les, May 11, 2005
    #13
  14. 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.
     
    The Older Gentleman, May 12, 2005
    #14
  15. Heh.

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

    'Hey, what about Dobbin?'

    "Oh ****....."
     
    The Older Gentleman, May 12, 2005
    #15
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