He got off light. My brother in Auckland NZ had his street shut down due to a garage fire started by a charger. His neighbor lost the garage, custom car and a bike or two.
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Is there a special way to charge a lithium battery?
- Thread starter timtune
- Start date
TK4
Well-known member
A few years ago a buddy had the lithium battery in his GSXR-600 set the seat on fire.
He was riding it at the time. Needless to say, he was not amused.
Relax
Well-known member
Based on this response by an Earth-X engineer, I am even more confident that the wrong charger was used.
Earth X Battery Warning!!!
Did you ever hear back from EarthX about this?I just did... I was emailed by our latest member to sign up on the forum (earthx).... I called and talked to t...
avidfoxflyers.com
Relax
Well-known member
Lead works on most bikes, but on hard starters LiFePO4's aren't used to save weight - they're for getting more cranking power in a form factor that still fits in the original battery compartment.
guzzirider
Well-known member
Probably work great in a BSA Victor if it had an electic start.
If your bike does not start in 2 complete revolutions of the engine, you need a tune-up not a better battery.
If your bike does not start in 2 complete revolutions of the engine, you need a tune-up not a better battery.
Relax
Well-known member
The SXV has a built-in fuel injection delay to allow the starter to spin the motor for a certain number of revolutions to build oil pressure before firing up. That can be up to 6 seconds depending on how cold the motor is. But it also has a 6-second cutoff timer on the starter motor to prevent it from overheating. Under the worst case scenario, you can end up cranking until the starter stops and the motor still hasn't started. Make the mistake of turning the key to "OFF" instead of waiting for the cooldown time to re-enable the starter button, and you'll just be repeating yourself.
I82l8
Well-known member
IMHO depends on your bike, battery location, on/off road, usage of bike.
In my case the battery is where on most bikes the gas tank is, at the top behind the handlebars.
Switching from the stock battery to lithium saved me 4 kg:
Attachments
Hi, I've been testing an Earth-X or two for about a year now.
First, you do need a different kind of charger for a lithium battery as you would for a traditional one. Now you can find, for about $50-60, options from Del-Tran, which makes a new battery tender with a toggle button, so you can switch between lithium and lead acid or agm.
The difference is in how each battery wants to be charged. Just like your car battery wants to be charged differently than your motorcycle battery does, your motorcycle's OEM battery probably wants to be charged differently than your lithium replacement does.
A lead-acid battery charger typically provides a constant voltage and gradually reduces the charging current as the battery charges until it's "full", whereas a lithium battery wants different charging "stages" including bulk charging, absorption charging, and a float or maintenance charge. If a lead-acid charger is used on a lithium battery, it can overcharge the lithium battery, leading to overheating, swelling, and potentially a fire hazard.
Some people will ask "Well how come a motorcycle's charging system doesn't fry a lithium battery?" and that's a good question, but when we're riding our motorcycles we aren't providing a steady current, it goes up and down with our RPM, and, some other voodoo magic I don't fully understand but maybe someone else can pick up the ball and run with it after I leave it here.
As for my two Earth-X batteries. First one failed! Apparently they switched providers for one particular component during COVID when "supply chain issues" was crippling commerce. They sent me a new one. That's been fine for many thousands of KM. I only use one of the chargers on their list of approved chargers on it though.
Hope this helps.
First, you do need a different kind of charger for a lithium battery as you would for a traditional one. Now you can find, for about $50-60, options from Del-Tran, which makes a new battery tender with a toggle button, so you can switch between lithium and lead acid or agm.
The difference is in how each battery wants to be charged. Just like your car battery wants to be charged differently than your motorcycle battery does, your motorcycle's OEM battery probably wants to be charged differently than your lithium replacement does.
A lead-acid battery charger typically provides a constant voltage and gradually reduces the charging current as the battery charges until it's "full", whereas a lithium battery wants different charging "stages" including bulk charging, absorption charging, and a float or maintenance charge. If a lead-acid charger is used on a lithium battery, it can overcharge the lithium battery, leading to overheating, swelling, and potentially a fire hazard.
Some people will ask "Well how come a motorcycle's charging system doesn't fry a lithium battery?" and that's a good question, but when we're riding our motorcycles we aren't providing a steady current, it goes up and down with our RPM, and, some other voodoo magic I don't fully understand but maybe someone else can pick up the ball and run with it after I leave it here.
As for my two Earth-X batteries. First one failed! Apparently they switched providers for one particular component during COVID when "supply chain issues" was crippling commerce. They sent me a new one. That's been fine for many thousands of KM. I only use one of the chargers on their list of approved chargers on it though.
Hope this helps.
Seven years with a Shorai Lithium.and its own charger...I can never see a reason to trickle charge as they simply do not lose charge. My KLR could sit for 9 months and start instantly - always amazed my riding buddy who stored it for me.
I was going through a non-lithium battery a year due to the high heat and humidity and infrequent use.
Got fed up and spent the extra money for the Shorai...a very good investment.
I was going through a non-lithium battery a year due to the high heat and humidity and infrequent use.
Got fed up and spent the extra money for the Shorai...a very good investment.
Relax
Well-known member
What you've described is the difference between a traditional "dumb" trickle charger and a "smart" charger (popularized by Deltran's Battery Tender). Either can be used to charge a LiFePO4 battery, as long as they don't have a desulphation, recovery, or repair mode. Those modes use high(er) voltage pulses (16 v or more) to dissolve the sulphates back into solution, but those voltages will kill a LiFePO4 battery. The other stages mentioned all occur at safe voltages (14.6 or less).
No Voodoo, just no desulphation in a vehicular charging system. But if your regulator doesn't prevent the voltage from going above 14.6, then you will have a seat heater if your battery has no internal BMS that accounts for overcharging.
Near the center of gravity of the bike. If they got it EXACTLY centered you can't feel the weight.
RC-31
Well-known member
I am reluctant to post here because of keyboard warriors mounting up with little or no qualifications....
Relax; your facts-based argument is losing traction to those who don't know that they don't know enough to know how little they know.
There seems to be some basic lack of understanding about voltage and current and what any kind of battey charger does.
Voltage regulators are about the simplest thing there is. Current regulators are much more complicated. Since you can't change the resistance of something, and its resistance changes, in order to keep a target current all you can do is change the voltage. so even a current regulator really is a (fast and) dynamic voltage regulator.
Did I say resistance for batteries? And resistance changes? Batteries have an internal resistance. Nobody mentioned this. How many people know this? How many people would even know how to measure this? The answer is not to use an Ohm meter, btw.
Smart chargers gauge this by checking voltage vs current. They aren't really smart. And this part of your external charger is important to match between your batteries -- IF you decide to go with a smart charger.
Batteries of the same chemistry behave the same regardless of whether they are in a car or bike or boat. Alternators vs regulators on stator systems are different but they are regulated to the same voltage. A voltage, by the way, that isn't much different between LiFeSO4 and PbSO4. That is why they are very close to being 100% compatible.
A failure of a regulator to limit the voltage WILL cause a catastrophic problem with either Li or Pb. One will burn you severely with heat. The other will burn you with heat and acid but will give you a nice sulfur smell as a warning. Pick your poison.
Now just don't force-feed your Li battery with a Pb trickle charger. Better yet, don't use a trickle charger/float charger at all - on either type of batttery. Supervise your charging and measure its charge. Disconnect when full. Pretty simple. You should be the smart in the charger. If you can be.
And I have been using a LiFeSO4 battery for longer than I can remember. I don't have charging problems, starting problems, failures or anything else with MY stuff BUT I do fix these problems for other riders. I don't maintain/float/trickle anything.
And as far as my hobby vs professional life: part of my many professional duties are to inspect, diagnose, recommend for replacement; batteries that are part of life safety systems and backups for those systems. We don't mess around and we know what we are doing.
Relax; your facts-based argument is losing traction to those who don't know that they don't know enough to know how little they know.
There seems to be some basic lack of understanding about voltage and current and what any kind of battey charger does.
Voltage regulators are about the simplest thing there is. Current regulators are much more complicated. Since you can't change the resistance of something, and its resistance changes, in order to keep a target current all you can do is change the voltage. so even a current regulator really is a (fast and) dynamic voltage regulator.
Did I say resistance for batteries? And resistance changes? Batteries have an internal resistance. Nobody mentioned this. How many people know this? How many people would even know how to measure this? The answer is not to use an Ohm meter, btw.
Smart chargers gauge this by checking voltage vs current. They aren't really smart. And this part of your external charger is important to match between your batteries -- IF you decide to go with a smart charger.
Batteries of the same chemistry behave the same regardless of whether they are in a car or bike or boat. Alternators vs regulators on stator systems are different but they are regulated to the same voltage. A voltage, by the way, that isn't much different between LiFeSO4 and PbSO4. That is why they are very close to being 100% compatible.
A failure of a regulator to limit the voltage WILL cause a catastrophic problem with either Li or Pb. One will burn you severely with heat. The other will burn you with heat and acid but will give you a nice sulfur smell as a warning. Pick your poison.
Now just don't force-feed your Li battery with a Pb trickle charger. Better yet, don't use a trickle charger/float charger at all - on either type of batttery. Supervise your charging and measure its charge. Disconnect when full. Pretty simple. You should be the smart in the charger. If you can be.
And I have been using a LiFeSO4 battery for longer than I can remember. I don't have charging problems, starting problems, failures or anything else with MY stuff BUT I do fix these problems for other riders. I don't maintain/float/trickle anything.
And as far as my hobby vs professional life: part of my many professional duties are to inspect, diagnose, recommend for replacement; batteries that are part of life safety systems and backups for those systems. We don't mess around and we know what we are doing.
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