I would be interested in knowing if anyone has a stronger "bolt on starter" than the Grosset. It does not turn my TP 1200, even when attached to a car battery..
ET: Engine (Twin) Twin e-starter options?
- Thread starter vinhrd998
- Start date
Herve hamon
Herve' Hamon, < herve.hamon2@wanadoo.fr > He was developing one but uses the LH kick start tunnel so no alternative.
Write and ask.
bananaman.
Write and ask.
bananaman.
From being a Car mechanic, I found the battery is only as good as the leads and connections,
Cheap jumper leads are a waste of money.
Cheap jumper leads are a waste of money.
Agreed. I run a diesel VW Golf DSG auto. I keep jump leads in the boot, just in case. The leads are probably 1/2" thick welding cable. They don't get hot! I've not needed to use them on the Rapide as the Grosset starter copes OK with the Rapide but as it is 8:1 with Mk1 cams it is a bit of a "softie" compared to a Terry Prince 1200.
Me being Me, I carry BIG leads and a new Battery in the boot of my Lovely Honda Petrol 
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I dont think leads came in to the example I was relating it was simply a matter of CCA and the length of time it takes to crank up a big bore twin and two Lithium did the job.
Personally I think High Compression pistons are not the way to go with the joke petrol and the speed limits in this risk avoiding world that is now so dangerous
Personally I think High Compression pistons are not the way to go with the joke petrol and the speed limits in this risk avoiding world that is now so dangerous
Also car batteries r getting old, sometimes....
I've had a fair bit of experience in the last few months with a variety of electric starters on these twin engines........Including the installation of two Grosset kits, a direct drive starter on a Shadow similar to the ones Bob Dunn does, and a 2015 1330 Godet Egli with the newer Harley sportster electric starter.........I also spent a bit of time talking to Ken Horner about the starting issues........ I believe the starter on the bike pictured above is a special unit that used a Harley starter with a custom gearbox made by Ken Horner's workshop. The main difference from the starter used by Patrick Godet is the gearbox uses a different gearing ratio to help crank the engine over.........Now this single item is the main problem with starting these engines........If you look at a typical starting gear ratio for a car engine, the ratio is around 10 or 12:1 whereas on this Egli I did recently, the overall ratio was 5 : 1 this is quite bad as you might well expect. There were two other contributing issues with this bike.........The ESA assembly was ramping to full travel both directions from initial cranking to engine "Fire up" this caused massive backlash in the primary drive, this must have gone close to smashing the starter off. Yes the battery was a large Gell type lead/acid of a size that would be used in a Harley........This needed to be in fully charged state to crank the engine well enough..........The engine was fine to start using absolutely "No throttle at all" on starting hot or cold. As soon as the throttle was opened even the smallest amount as the engine fired up the kicking back on the starter was massive..........To me it sounded like the starter was being hit by a sledge hammer..........Now this was fully confirmed to me by Ken Horner who said that on a 1600cc twin engine they built using the same starter as in the pics above.........The engine would crank over sort of ok with a big battery, but as soon as the throttle is opened it was "All over" ............hopeless...... This confirmed to me that the bigger engines without any form of decompression was too much effort for almost any starter/battery combination of any practical size or shape. In fact I asked at my local Harley shop how any of the bigger twins go without any decompressor device, and they said that it simply smashes the starter system to bits. There is more to the story, but I fixed the ESA using pieces of 4 mm "O" ring as mentioned on here by Stu when we were discussing ESA's in another thread, this worked extremely well for minimal cost. The customer is less fearful about starting the bike now (it literally had 300 Km's on the clock from new, as he was too afraid to use it).......My suggestion to anyone contemplating the use of an electric starter on any of these engines is to use some form of decompressor to allow the engine to spool up to full cranking speed and then allowed to start from there, especially on a cold engine...........Cheers for now............. Greg.