Quote:
Originally Posted by daktulos
I took a 45 minute trip recently to see my mother recently with the headlight on. Unfortunately, I turned the key too far and left the side-light on when I parked it. After a couple of hours, I needed a jump start to get going again.
A 5W bulb for 2 hours is about .8Ah and the battery is 10Ah I think, so it clearly wasn't anywhere near fully charged or at full capacity.
I have a cheap battery, and I'm definitely not sure it was fully charged, so I'm not too worried about it.
However ... in the garage, I started the engine with the headlight on to check it is charging. The headlight brightens noticeably once the bike has started and idles which I expected, but revving the engine caused it to dim somewhat, which I wasn't expecting.
So, here are my questions: Is this normal? Is the alternator/reg/rec on the sv650 (curvy) so finely balanced that riding with the headlight on could result in the battery discharging? Or, does it look like I may have a problem?
Thanks.
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45mins riding should be plenty to charge the battery - remember the R/R isnt a trickle charger so puts plenty into the battery until the the volts come up.
The standard R/R is very crude in operation and actually dumps the excess power of the generator as heat (hence adequate cooling is very important) once the correct system voltage is reached so, at higher revs, using more power like lighting actually helps the R/R.
Your lights dimming when revved is unusual and I cant think of any explanation so best to follow the steps that have been recommended....