trippivot wrote:
first you need a good strong battery
Not necessarily. You can run without a battery at all if you use a cap.
Also, I ran a whole year with an old defective battery. It would not take a charge at all, but I could bumpstart with no problem and it ran fine with a consistent 14 volts. But the battery was not shorted internally, it was just not able to take a charge.
trippivot wrote:
motorcycle charging systems are NOT designed to charge the battery - they only cover the loads
They have to charge the battery or the battery would be dead after a few starts. Charging systems have more than enough capacity to charge a battery and often they shorten the life of a battery by charging too much.
trippivot wrote:
a weak battery will make the system behave this way
What do you mean by weak? A defective battery may, meaning one with a shorted cell or one that won't hold a charge, but a battery that is simply low on charge won't.
trippivot wrote:
my question is do you have a ampmeter? this is the real test noboddy does. it is the real indicator of electrical flow.
True, but it's not really necessary in most cases. Since the load is known, a voltage test implies the current. If you are blowing fuses then you know you are using too much current. The only area that is not covered by a fuse is between the battery and the rectifier (although, I've seen some stock KZ's with fuses there too). If the battery is sucking down so much current that the charging system can't keep up with it, the battery will be very apparent that it is defective. It will not turn over the engine at all.
trippivot wrote:
dosent mean a thing if you have 14 volts and .01 amps
nothing gets done with a reading like that.
That is an impossible reading which could never occur if the bike is running. By knowing the load, knowing the voltage is all you need. The fact that the bike is running tells you are getting at least 5 amps or 10 amps with the lights on. If it's at 14 volts, you know the charging system is doing something since it's near the maximum voltage the regulator will allow. This means it's even possible the charging system has more in reserve.
trippivot wrote:
smart chargers operate at 1.5 amps not enough to energize all 6 cells once the specific gravity of the electrolite goes weak you need a 2/6 amp real battery charger to be effective.
The current through the battery is dependent on the voltage applied to the battery. If a charger is designed to force 1.5 amps, then it will apply as much voltage as it can to achieve that 1.5 amps. I haven't seen a charger like that. Most chargers put out a large voltage but with a high internal impedance so the voltage drops quickly if the current increases. (It's basically the behavior of a transformer's output characteristic.)
You don't want a forced-current charger because if the battery is charged, there is no reason to force 1.5 amps through it. The 2 or 6 amp rating on "dumb" chargers are just approximate. They put out more or less depending on the state of the battery, but by natural means, not sophisticated circuitry.
Regardless of the type of charger, the basic operation is the same. That is: apply a voltage to the terminals, and the state of the battery will determine the current. The smart ones read the current and determine the state of the battery and shut off accordingly.
