Have an R1 (5PW 2003) fitted in the Westy.

How does a bike engine charge a battery....... its not as obvious as a car engine and alternator bolted on the side?

Does a bike engine and bike battery cope with night time driving - dip beams, rear lights, interior lights etc.... it a bit more load than bike lighting?

you have a stator in the engine, then a regulator and rectifier which is a little black box with some fins on it usually. About all i know

Yeah, again im not a bike person, but as i understand the windings are typically internal to the engine, with an external reg, same parts as an alternator just more integral and typically less powerful an output.


Daniel

Are car alternators 3-phase like a bike?

Normally yes

Most modern bikes have twin headlights / rear lights, so no more load than a bike. Unless you plan on fitting a heater.

Andy

it has an in built generator with external rectifier that changes its from AC to DC & a regulator that keeps it down to a manageable 13-14V to charge battery

[Edited on 29/4/11 by andyfiggy2002]

Watch out when wiring your headlights - a lot of twin headlight bikes have low wattage bulbs fitted so relatively small current draw - I managed to burn out my ZZR1100 alternator when replacing them for 'standard' bulbs by mistake.

Another point to be aware of is that some heater blowers can be quite a heavy current draw. Otherwise, a bike alternator should cope quite well - swapping to LEDs will help quite a bit too.

[Edited on 29-4-11 by RazMan]

Make sure you use a bike battery, we did and have no problems. I have heard that people who fit a car battery to
a bike engine find it fails to charge properly.
From personal experience ... you will need to fit a trickle charger every time leave the car. The bike batteries wont hold
charge given the inconsistent use we give our cars

best type of Batterys ive found are the ODYSSEY-PC545


ODYSSEY PC545 MOTORCYCLE / MOTORBIKE JETSKI BATTERY | eBay UK



Kev................

The alternators in bike engines are not quite the same as that fitted to a car. Instead of a field coil, they use permanent magnets which means they effectively have full output all the time. The regulator simply shunts (i.e. short circuits) the outputs to achieve regulation, dumping the energy back into the stator coils (and the regulator itself will get quite warm).

There should be no issues charging a car battery rather than a bike one, they both use the same lead acid construction with similar voltage levels. Some bikes now use AGM batteries (similar to the Odyssey batteries).

The need to use a battery maintainer is simply down to the residual current draw ( ECU, clock etc.) coupled with the very low capacity of bike batteries; they can have 1/4 or less of the capacity of even a fairly small car battery. If you fit an isolating switch or disconnect the battery when not using the car for a while, you only have self discharge to worry about which is relatively small.