Thursday, February 18, 2010

Lost in the Electric Forest

I've been stalled for a while, primarily because I'm not sure of my direction to take with the batteries and chargers.  I follow the Yahoo Thundersky group, and it seems the more I read, the dumber I become.  I know that Lithum Batteries are a must, but the lack of reliable chargers and management systems make me very nervous.  It's bad enough the only way to get lithium batteries is from china, so I hate to source a charger the same way.  I placed inquiries with Schumacher and Deltran and neither has a product for charging Lithium chemistry.

The old saying goes: "hard to see the forest for the trees" (or something like that).  It's now clear to me that I'm getting bogged down in details but not making any progress.  So, I'm going to focus on getting things running without wasting too much money. (wait have I said that before?) 

I have these B&B 17AH SLA batteries sitting in my garage, salvaged from a  Data Center UPS.  From the start, I've wanted to use them to get educated and test things out, but hadn't figured out the charging method that would worlk for them and Lithum. Occasionally I hook them up to my Battery Tender Plus, to keep them in shape, but there is no way I'm putting six of those on the bike, just for short term use.  Fortunately, one of my brethren on El Moto was selling six of the ACI SuperChargers at a reasonable price.

After getting the chargers, I plugged them all in to make sure they are charging properly.  Now I'm taking turns connecting one of the Gixxer's headlamps to each battery for about 30 minutes, then connecting the charger and a volt meter to observe the charging cycle.

1 comment:

  1. Progress is good. I decided to use lead acid for the first go 'round too. If these batteries fit in your existing tray, go for it. Then imagine how good the lithium will seem by comparison!

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