Gen1 battery woes again!

[gadget]

I'm going down the 'voltage gauge' route too, have you seen the 12v volt gauges that have an 'on-off' switch on ebay? About £6.00 . So you can have the gauge wired direct to the battery and choose either on or off while you ride.

[SV650rules]

Originally Posted by gadget

I'm going down the 'voltage gauge' route too, have you seen the 12v volt gauges that have an 'on-off' switch on ebay? About £6.00 . So you can have the gauge wired direct to the battery and choose either on or off while you ride.

Would want it on all the time when engine running as it is there to let you know if a problem happens in time to take some action, I would turn it off while parked to stop it drawing power ( although only milliamps ) will compromise and connect it direct to ignition switch controlled supply or maybe use a relay controlled by an switch controlled supply at least to take all those voltage dropping connections out of circuit.

Just had a thought - I have a direct to battery charging lead with SAE plug on it, may use another spare SAE lead to connect voltmeter into same plug - as I will never want voltmeter and charger plugged in at the same time, the charging lead is fused as well right next to battery + so it would be a win-win....

update - after connecting the voltmeter direct to battery by re-purposing an old SAE plug and cable it reads maximum 0.1volts low now, so all the inaccuracy I was seeing was the volts drops in bikes cable loom and plugs -( every day is a school day ) - loom was dropping up to 0.3 volts with LED headlight and sidelight ( The LED headlight draws 1.5 amps, a normal 55/60watt filament draws about 5 amps and LED sidelight draws a few milli-amps compared to 0.5 amp for a filament one ). When I turned on LED spots drawing about 0.7 amps each the volt drop hit 0.6volts. Downside is I have to plug voltmeter in if I want to use it ( I unplug when parked for battery drain ).