Starter motors - difference between car and bike ones

-back, bang, there goes another starter motor.

 

As I think about it, the *simplest* way to add an electric starter to
a small engine would be to attach a DC GENERATOR mechanically to the
crankshaft without any gear reduction, bendix drive, sprag clutch, or
ramp and roller device.

Suzuki did exactly this with the starter-generator of the 1974 GT-185.

Which is not to say that one necessarily needs a GT-185 starter-
generator, which might be hard to acquire.

An automobile generator would work as a starter-generator on a small
engine, but you'd need a reverse current relay to stop the battery
from draining through the starter any time the engine wasn't running.

Automobile engines that used DC generators were too large for the
generator to
crank, so they had the conventional electric starter with a bendix
drive.

If, for some reason the contacts in the reverse current relay (which
was half of the electromechanical voltage regulator of that era) stuck
closed, the current from the battery would overheat the soldered
connections in the generator and they would melt.

When the driver started the engine, the hot solder would be flung out
of the commutator and the generator wouldn't work until the commutator
was resoldered (assuming, of course, that the insulation of the
windings wasn't ruined by the heat).

 

Yamaha also used it on the RD200 and DT125E[1], and it was a shit system

[1] I've owned examples of both.

 

The system was in use before this.

It was crap, anyway. The evidence is in the fact that it was tried, and
then swiftly discarded. Along with anti-dive forks, enclosed disc
brakes, Ram Air tinware on other Suzukis, air pressurised front forks.
Triumph's Slickshift, and Lord knows how many other ideas that seemed
bright at the time.

 

Motorcycle owners are not known for being the sharpest tool in the
shed when it comes to maintaining the electrical systems of their
motorcycles, and their charging lighting systems result in what are
essentially unreliable rolling flashlights that sometimes work.

The motorcycle gets ridden hard and put away and neglected, so it's
not surprising that batteries would be trashed quickly and the
electric starter portion of the starter generator wouldn't always
work.

A starter generator isn't the most efficient generator and it isn't
the most efficient starter, either. But starter generators were used
on propellor-driven aircraft purchased by the US Air Force in the late
1940's and early 1950's, so they
definitely were adequately reliable for the application.

It would take a 30 or 40 amp car DC generator to equal the typical
0.5KW starter found on a Japanese liter bike.

 

So, because something was reliable enough for the notoriously unreliable
aircraft of sixty years ago, it's a good solution now?

Rii-iight.

 

Thank **** the RD still had a kick-start as well.

 

Did you just pull the phrase "notoriously unreliable" out of your
flabby duffer ass?

Were you ever an aircraft maintenance dispatcher? I was.

Were you ever an aircraft electric specialist? I was.

Did you ever graduate from an aircraft electrical specialist technical
training school? I did.

Did you ever work in an aircraft electrical accesories repair shop? I
did.

Did you ever work as an aircraft electrical specialist on a
flightline? I did.

When you can speak from the position of experience, your opinion the
subject will be respected. Until then, STFU and warm your comfy chair
in Earls Court.

 

I wish that all motorcycles still had kick starters.

I got into riding motorcycles back in the early 1960's, when
automotive electrical and ignition systems were unreliable and similar
systems on motorcycles were even worse.

But motorcycles still had a kick starter and one person could push
start a motorcycle if the kick starter failed.

 

And you were probably crap at all of them.

By today's standards, propellor driven aircraft of that era were,
indeed, notoriously unreliable. Sorry.

(I suppose there were exceptions: DC3, for example, but the accident
rates prove the point)

Earls Court?

<Puzzled>

 

And that cars had cranking handles? If a decent battery and a 1.5hp
starter motor won't get a big bike going, then a kickstarter won't
either.

And, crucially, a kickstarter won't light the fires on a fuel-injected
bike that needs a healthy dose of volts to get the system working.

But aircraft were paragons of reliability? How odd.

One person can still push-start most bikes. As long as they aren't FI,
of course.

 

I've seen Dodger bump-start the Wing. Impressive, it was.

 

I spent several years working in the aircraft research industry and I
think you're a total loser. Now **** off and get your head back on
your fathers cock.

 

I can only remember owning one car that could be started by cranking,
it was a second-hand 1962 TR-4 which had about a 2.5 liter engine. I
don't think I got the crank handle with the car though, it's been so
very long ago.

Electric starters on liter bikes aren't that big, they might be 0.5 to
0.75 horsepower. A 1.5 hp starter would draw over 100 amperes starting
the engine.

And, Harley Davidson owners became adept at using both the electrical
starter and the kick starter at the same time. Which is what the
previous owner of my
1960 Honda 250cc Dream told me to do when the electrical starter
wouldn't start the engine, which was most of the time.

Hey! Pilots *love* to fly, they will try to fly *anything* that will
get off the ground.

But if the engine won't start, they cannot fly it until it gets fixed.
I rebuilt hundreds of aircraft *generators* but rarely had an aircraft
*starter* on my bench.

Starters are only used to *start* the engine, so the brushes and
bearings don't wear out. But a generator is turning anytime the engine
is running, so the brushes wear out on a regular basis.

I don't remember *ever* having to fix an aircraft starter generator,
but that was long ago. You were still in diapers then.

 

Does Leonard Street ring a bell?

 

I worked in research and development at Edwards AFB when you were a
child, and I knew a lot of the first astronauts *before* they were
astronauts.

I'll thank you to keep your vile incestuous fantasies to yourself, Omi-
palone

 

Yeah, and look how brightly some of their lights were shining when the
capsule turned into a superheater.

Daddy told you to wait until your sister's had a go?

 

****, but you are *the most incompetent* stalker. ))

 

It ain't in Earls Court.

KrustyUS has been trying to stalk me by Googling everything I've ever
written, done, or been to, and he's managing to cock it up superbly.

He's discovered that my house is non-existent, that some bod in Chile is
actually Italian, that there's a futures market in oranges (I mean,
wtf?), and thinks Chile makes orange juice.

In short, he's shown why he was fired from his job for incompetence. If
you're going to stalk someone, at least be *good* at it. )

As it is, like I said elsewhere, it's akin to bein stalked by a mentally
defective sheep wearing Size Twelve diving boots.

 

****. I went with pork bellies.