Thanks!pumpguy wrote:Mayor,
Just curious if your state requires electric turn signals to be road legal? For motorcycles, my state, Illinois, does not, but does require an electric powered horn.
So for my conversion I installed an 85W lighting coil to the stator, front and rear hydraulic brake light switches, a UFO enduro rear fender with tail and stoplight. The bike came with an after market 35W incandescent dual filament headlight. For the horn, I found a cheap Chinese 12V job, and am powering it with a rechargeable 9.6V 1000mAh Ni-Mh SANYO RC car battery that only weighs 4 oz. (<www.batteriesamerica.com> Makes a good loud beep, although I can't say how long it will last before it needs recharging. Of course a mirror was added too.
So, unless you must have turn signals, this might be a good way to go. The RC car battery comes with a set of plug-in leads. Along with the battery, I got 2 supply lead plugs, one for the bike, and 1 for the charger. For a charger, I had a 12V DC 300mA power supply laying around that works just fine. The output is a concentric plug, the center is + and the outside is -. For charging, just stick the red wire in the center hole, and use a spring clothes pin to hold the black wire to the outside. The standard charging rate for this battery is 14 hrs @ 100mA. Fast charge is 2 hours @ 550mA.
Hope this helps. Good luck.
My goal is to run everything from the battery and have the stator charge the battery as I ride via the regulator/rectifier. I rewound my stator, which should put out about 75-85W, but I'm interested in the effectiveness of that power output in terms of keeping the battery topped off. If I went with a large battery, would the ~80W from the stator be enough to keep the battery charged? Just trying to find that Ah sweetspot.
Also, I'm in Maine and need to have turn signals. They're not sticklers during inspection and will not care if anything's DOT certified. But I'd like to err on the side of caution and be able to have everything turned on without the engine running for inspection. I'll have LED everything--turn signals, brake/tail light, headlight, and a 12V horn.
So right now the two major questions are what size battery to do the job of powering roughly 40W of total power, and what is the largest battery I can fit in that will be effectively charged by the stator.
Once I've figured that out, I'll buy a battery, mod the airbox to fit it, and do a big writeup to help others.