parked my bike after a short ride the other night. Both the headlight and tail light were blown the next morning and I know they were working the night before. Anybody have any ideas? I have been fighting an unbalanced charging system since my PMA swap and am wondering what could cause a surge.
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weird coincidence or a sign?
- Thread starter Brew
- Start date
Hi Brew,
Zen Buddhists say that every question contains it's own answer.
Betcha putting your electrics back to stock would fix the problem.
angus67
Welder's penetrate deeper!!
Maybe when you turned off the bike, the cap discharged and blew out your candles
All I can think of is "heat soak".
After a ride, followed by parking, the cooling airflow stops, the engine radiates heat, and stuff close to the engine now gets hotter than normal.
This goes thru my mind when I think of custom builds that place electronic contrivances close to the head, or in the starter pocket...
After a ride, followed by parking, the cooling airflow stops, the engine radiates heat, and stuff close to the engine now gets hotter than normal.
This goes thru my mind when I think of custom builds that place electronic contrivances close to the head, or in the starter pocket...
Don't know if it makes sense with a bike, but on caps that size you can wire a large resistor (megaohms) permanently across it to let it discharge when it isn't being charged.
Eotnak
XS650 Enthusiast
+1
another thing to consider is that the components themselves are running hot from voltage overage. Or cheap/bad regulator or wiring couldn't suppress a brownout from the PMA at shutdown.
When a capacitor discharges, the voltage only goes lower, not higher.
Hi xjwmx,
what makes sense on a bike is keeping the battery.
Switching to a capacitor is a fashion statement that's even dumber than going hardtail in that a
hardtailed bike is still reliable even if it's hard on the back while a capacitor bike is a potential push-it-home situation.
xjwmx..................yes, my amateur radio transceiver has 470 K ohm bleeder resistors across my high voltage capacitors. The voltage is up around 900 volts DC, and it takes about 3 minutes to discharge to zero, after the radio is turned off.
His head light and tail light would have blown from abnormally high voltage, when the engine was running and charging the capacitor.
I'm going to take a guess, and say that the voltage went as high as 18, 19 or maybe 20 volts. As Brew says, his system is likely unbalanced. His regulator cannot control the voltage. Adding a bleeder resistor to the capacitor will do nothing to limit the abnormal high voltage, as a bleeder resistor only does its thing when the power source is removed i.e. when the engine is off.
I agree with Fred. Go back to using the stock alternator, and you won't have abnormal high voltages or any blowing fuses.
Those high voltages are also bad news for ignition systems.
PMAs cause lots of needless problems on these bikes.
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