Cheap, Simple and Safe Home Made Battery Charger Project

I believe there are no mistakes in the schematic, various other people with electronic circuit design skills have looked at it without any criticism to its safety. It has been designed to be safe for leaving a battery connected to it indefinitely, safe electrically, and designed not to stress any of the components.

DISCLAIMER: I designed this cos i wanted a decent charger quickly, I'm sharing it for the purpose of sharing informtation. This info comes without any warranty. Its not a guide, if you build its entirely at your own risk. Seek professional advice etc. Electricity is dangerous, sparks are dangerous, petrol is dangerous.
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This is meant to be a cheap, quick, easy charger for topping the battery up at night and safe for leaving the battery hooked up to it after the battery is fully charged. It can be used on wet or gel cell 12V lead acid batteries.
Unlike some cheap chargers which apparently float batteries at 14.4 or even 15V once they are fully charged. (Very bad for lead acid batteries)

The LM317T is a great chip, its got short circuit protection and thermal protection. Hopefully these features wont ever be "needed" :)

Pointers:

* Its best to keep the AC cable long (as needed) and the DC cable (output of charger) as short as possible (basically reach from the floor to the bike's battery and a bit extra) This is to minimize the wire's resistance which acts to decrease charging voltage and current.

* I power up the charger, connect the negative terminal to the chassis where the battery bolts to it, then blow on the positive terminal as I hook up the positive crocodile clip.
Then give both clips a little wiggle to ensure they are firmly attached and making a good electrical connection. The reason I blow on the positive is to ensure there aren't a bunch of petrol vapours lurking around it. Spark plus petrol = ignition. Its just a precaution. Prevention is better than cure :) Just like keeping your battery charged.

* When batteries are in a state of discharge (Below 100%) they slowly self destruct, the rate depends how dead they are. Lead acid batteries can last many years.

* A charging connector mounted on the bike presents a convenient option which would likely provide a more solid electrical connection with lower resistance.

*The charger is designed to handle a short circuit, and the amount of power it puts out is limited to about 4W.
A big metal frame can dissipate 4W with ease. On the other hand, using a high current battery charger, a lot more heat could be generated by a short circuit.

Enjoy! Lope

Digi Dash - Koso RX1N Installation

WIRING INSTRUCTIONS: Koso RX1N

Wiring up the rx1n is dead easy to do, and no modding to any current loom is needed, just splicing in some wires using the supplied "crunch" splices. Some soldering may be required for a couple of wires (power) as the loom took the supply off is too far away.

POWER WIRES.
Ok, never seen an nc35 wiring diagram, but for the nc30 this is where i took power from. On the riders right hand side of the bike, just above the dipstick, are a few plugs.

One of the plugs has 3 wires in it. This will lead from this plug up to the ignition barrel with a red, red/black and a blue/orange wires.

Splice in the rx1n red with the bikes red wire on near this plug.(Permanent 12v) splice the rx1n brown (not brown with bullet connector) into red/black (ignition)
Now, while on this side, somewhere on the frame, find a good clean point to attach the rx1n black wire to. (negative) MAKE SURE ITS A GOOD CONNECTION!! this will also determine sensor values, as the unit uses a common single earth for all parts.

SPEED SENSOR
For the speed, either take it off the front or rear wheel, however you can mount it good, just read the instructions.

RPM
On the nc30, I took the supplied wire with a connector to go inline with the 12v source to a coil, just use the wire and connect in between one coil point (front is easier)

TEMPERATURE
The supplied temperature sensors (2 of them) are 1/8 npt or pt (bad engrish manual) thread size, and screws sraight into the oem hole for the oem temp guage. Cant use the oem sensor, so just unscrew (located very close to power plug as above) it and replace with one of the new ones. Using the supplied plugable wire, connect up to the rx1ns loom and done.

You can use the 2nd one to read oil temp, and has provisions in the dash to show oil and water temps at once. (i am tapping my sump plug when i get new one from shop)

INDICATORS
all you need to do here, is splice one of the 2 wires heading out to your indicators. Blue on rx1n to the left indicator wire on bike, and orange on rx1n to right wire on bike. (coincidentally on the bike out to indicator are blue and orange!)

OIL PRESSURE
For oil pressure, this needs to be connected to the negative side of the wire to be correct, or it will show opposite to what it should. On the plug that went to the speedo unit, before the plug pull back some tape and find the blue/red stripe wire, and splice the grey rx1n wire into it.

NEUTRAL
Neutral is the same as oil pressure needing a negative to function properly. splice the rx1n white wire to the light blue/red wire, at same point on plug as oil pressure

HIGH BEAM
splice the highbeam light wire, rx1n yellow, at the same point as oil pressure and neutral on the blue wire.

BEFORE
ATTEMPTING THIS INSTALLATION, DOWNLOAD A WIRING DIAGRAM FOR YOUR SPECIFIC NC30 OR DIFFERENT BIKE, AND USING A MULTIMETER (EVEN WITH SAME COLOUR WIRES AS MENTIONED) MAKE SURE THE +/- IS WHAT IS REQUIRED, AS 12V ON A NEG WIRE CAN HURT THE UNIT.....

 

Courtesy of mojododo(400GB Forums)

Is my battery any good?

The battery fitted to the NC30 and NC35 as standard are what's known as SLA (sealed lead-acid) and are designed to be maintenance-free in use. An SLA battery has a self-discharge characteristic of 1 percent per 24 hours (Note - the self-discharge in a Gel MF battery is 0.1 percent per day). In other words, the battery will go from a fully charged to discharged state in 80 days. You should never discharge a battery past 80 percent (60 percent for Gel MF) hence the 80 days, and not 100 days as your simple arithmetic would suggest.

If you're likely to have the bike laid up for long periods, over the winter for instance, its best to charge the battery intermittently. I'd recommend every 60 days maximum put the battery on a suitably designed motorcycle charger (Optimate or similar) and let it run through its cycle.

To check the general condition of the battery, make sure its fully charged then disconnect it from the charger and any possible load and let it rest for 30-45 minutes. Measure the voltage at the terminals using a suitable DVM. If you get less than 12.7 volts DC, the battery is not as healthy as it could be and it is time to consider replacing it. If you get less than 12.3 volts DC, it's definitely time to replace it. Also, if the battery is more than three years old, likewise replace it.

Incidently, you can do a rough and ready check of your regulator/rectifier in a similar manner. With the battery properly connected on the bike, start the engine, increase rpm to 5,000 and check the DC voltage at the terminals - you should get approximately 15.5 volts DC. Any more and you may have a regulator problem. Similarly, you can check for AC voltage at the terminals. If you get any AC voltage at all your rectifier is beginning to fail (and killing your battery while its failing - double jeopardy!). The rectifiers used are known as full-wave rectifiers, and any AC reading at all is a bad sign.

Specifications

Battery:

• Capacity - 12V, 6Ah
• Voltage
  • Fully Charged - 13 to 13.2V
  • Uncharged - below 12.3V
• Charging rate
  • Normal - 0.7A for 5 to 10hrs
  • Quick - 3.0A for 1hr
• Current leakage - mA (max)

Alternator:

• Stator coil resistence - 0.1 to 1.0ohms 

Regulator/Rectifier:

• Regulated voltage output - 13.5 to 15.5V@5000rpm
• Regulated current output - 0 to 6A@5000rpm

Starter motor:

• Bush length
  • Standard - 12.0 to 13.0mm
  • Recommended Service limit - 6.5mm 

Fuses:

• VFR
  • Main - 30A
  • Others - 10A x 3, 20A x 1

• RVF
  • Main - 30A
  • Others - 10A x 3, 15A x 1 

 

 

Wiring Diagrams

Wiring Diagrams