A Battery of questions

Roslyn

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Non-VOC Member
I run three old triumphs one positive earth 12 volts with a alternator ,coil ignition and was originally 6 volts when it left triumphs 1957 (lead acid 5 years old and counting) the other two are mag/dyno system and are both negative earth 6 volts (one gel and the other a AGM type) and I just leave them on the bike if there flat I just charge them and carry on as normal and one bike is left outside in all the year around and as for long term leaving petrol in the tank I put some two stroke oil or paraffin or any thing oily have at hand. I have drained the shadow tank dry as it stored indoors (fumes) Batteries are cheap enough these days so why fuss and they made cheaply as well and do not last as long as they did in the past and you can buy AGM battery now for under £20 and they fit inside a old battery box with lots of amp hours
 

Roslyn

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Non-VOC Member
oh the Shadow is 12 volt negatve earth with a mag and a 12 volt dynamo nothing fancy and it worked when the bke was on the road
 

Mike 40M

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VOC Member
Line them up on a shelf, good. Warm, bad. They discharge faster. Only an empty one will freeze to death. I usually charge them only once in a winter. Each will fill up in 24 hours. So a midwinter charging session will take me a fortnight, one minute a day. The total loss bikes have 3 batteries each.
 

LoneStar

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VOC Member
Idea, totally unproven: get a sprinkler timer like this:


Connect the input to a smart charger, outputs to your batteries. Program the timer to charge each battery for a short period daily, weekly etc. as required.

Reason it may not work: the timers are designed for 24V AC, might not work on 14-16V DC. The issue would be the electronics. These usually require DC so there's probably an internal rectifier, and DC input would be OK. Lower than designed voltage might be fatal though.

Someone with a spare timer may want to experiment.
 

Gary Gittleson

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VOC Member
You're confused, Mr. LoneStar. No worries. We all do it; more so as time goes on.

The site says the input is 120 VAC and output is 20 VAC. I don't know what devices it's designed to power but I do know that I don't have any.

I think Vibrac is looking for a "set it and forget it" solution. Having to set timers etc. doesn't fit that bill.
 

LoneStar

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VOC Member
I'm often confused, but not about this. The specified input of 120 VAC is to the external transformer (plug-in "brick"), which outputs 24 VAC to the actual timer. You could just feed 14VDC into the timer - might work, might not. If it did, you could "set it and forget it" - only needs to be programmed once.
 

vibrac

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VOC Member
I did also consider a solar charger for the van it's a big battery and sitting on SORN through the winter means the last battery only covered two summers. With the bikes I had to replace two batteries in the spring at the very least they are coming off the bikes this winter
 

Bill Thomas

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VOC Member
I wonder if you have a room in the house, You could put the batteries,
I am sure the cold does not help, When standing for months ?.
I know I like to leave the batteries on the Bikes, Just in case we have a nice day.
 
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