Naturalsystem
XS650 Member
I've been having an issue with my charging system for some time now, I will try to explain as succinctly as possible as there have been a few changes etc along the way.
I bought this bike relatively stock and only changed out the regulator and rectifier from mechanical ones as I was riding once and the rectifier pins snapped off inside it (unrepairable).
As I've been building my bike during the pandemic this year, I decided to go with a lithium battery, an 8 cell antigravity, as I wanted to save space when I installed the hardtail on the bike. Admittedly, I was disappointed with it at first as it didn't seem to fix my problems... which actually turned to be my coils (replaced with two bigger green coils and new points).
To preface, my bike at this stage has:
So after completing the build and before paint, I set off for a ride in the evening and about 3km's into the ride, I heard a pop and I could smell a sickly sweet smell. I pulled over and the bike was idling fine, so I thought it was maybe something in the area omitting the smell and continued on. Not 1km after pulling the bike died and I could see smoke pouring out of the battery box. Lithium battery had exploded.
(fun tip, make sure you clean fire extinguisher powder off bare metal straight away, it's highly corrosive)
After that gigantic headache, I tried a small 7Ah battery (Generic $30 one from eBay) with roughly the same footprint, rode around for a while and was fine for about a month.... then it exploded too. I figured maybe I had just had some seriously bad luck and because it was a battery I had laying around... I chalked it up to that.
So, next battery (#3 at this point). Purchased a SSB Lithium Powersport Battery (LFP14H-BS)
Now this is where I get a little iffy on my battery choice.
The specs don't exactly match up when comparing the website and the battery itself (battery has 160CCA on it where the website is 290CCA).
What concerns me is the max charging (15 Amps).
This lasted all of one ride... yep.
Same symptoms, pop and sickly sweet smell followed by the lithium smoke....
Here are the tests I've conducted:
Tested the rotor, it’s within spec and I’m happy with the results (5.3ohms) and the brushes are within spec too and look nice.
I cleaned all surfaces too.
That rules that out being an issue or even collateral damage.
Next, I’ve tried to measure the brushes in relation to the regulator. I have a 70-79 charging system, so black and green wires. I get continuity between the black and green with everything plugged in. I also checked that on the brushes and they do same.
I measure 5ohms between the brushes / green and black.
I measured the white wires from the stator, all measure 0.5ohms against each other, which seems to be within spec.
At this point, I'm a little lost. I've read so much in the past few months about this charging system that I'm not entirely sure what to believe. So many people say that the stock system is not cut out for a lithium. I've seen PamcoPete say it is if installed with a solid state regulator. Hell I've even seen Reg/rec combo units specifically made for lithium batteries and xs650s.
I would really appreciate some help and direction as frankly, I cannot afford to blow up another battery hahaha!
Thanks in advance guys,
I bought this bike relatively stock and only changed out the regulator and rectifier from mechanical ones as I was riding once and the rectifier pins snapped off inside it (unrepairable).
As I've been building my bike during the pandemic this year, I decided to go with a lithium battery, an 8 cell antigravity, as I wanted to save space when I installed the hardtail on the bike. Admittedly, I was disappointed with it at first as it didn't seem to fix my problems... which actually turned to be my coils (replaced with two bigger green coils and new points).
To preface, my bike at this stage has:
- Stock points
- Stock charging system
- Reg/rec combo purchased from Geoff's XS in Sydney (which seems to be a mike's xs one or copy)
- Antigravity Lithium Battery (8 cell)
- Kick only
- No starter or safety relays
- Twin headlights + Tail light
- No indicators
- No horn
- No gauges
So after completing the build and before paint, I set off for a ride in the evening and about 3km's into the ride, I heard a pop and I could smell a sickly sweet smell. I pulled over and the bike was idling fine, so I thought it was maybe something in the area omitting the smell and continued on. Not 1km after pulling the bike died and I could see smoke pouring out of the battery box. Lithium battery had exploded.
(fun tip, make sure you clean fire extinguisher powder off bare metal straight away, it's highly corrosive)
After that gigantic headache, I tried a small 7Ah battery (Generic $30 one from eBay) with roughly the same footprint, rode around for a while and was fine for about a month.... then it exploded too. I figured maybe I had just had some seriously bad luck and because it was a battery I had laying around... I chalked it up to that.
So, next battery (#3 at this point). Purchased a SSB Lithium Powersport Battery (LFP14H-BS)
Now this is where I get a little iffy on my battery choice.
The specs don't exactly match up when comparing the website and the battery itself (battery has 160CCA on it where the website is 290CCA).
What concerns me is the max charging (15 Amps).
This lasted all of one ride... yep.
Same symptoms, pop and sickly sweet smell followed by the lithium smoke....
Here are the tests I've conducted:
Tested the rotor, it’s within spec and I’m happy with the results (5.3ohms) and the brushes are within spec too and look nice.
I cleaned all surfaces too.
That rules that out being an issue or even collateral damage.
Next, I’ve tried to measure the brushes in relation to the regulator. I have a 70-79 charging system, so black and green wires. I get continuity between the black and green with everything plugged in. I also checked that on the brushes and they do same.
I measure 5ohms between the brushes / green and black.
I measured the white wires from the stator, all measure 0.5ohms against each other, which seems to be within spec.
At this point, I'm a little lost. I've read so much in the past few months about this charging system that I'm not entirely sure what to believe. So many people say that the stock system is not cut out for a lithium. I've seen PamcoPete say it is if installed with a solid state regulator. Hell I've even seen Reg/rec combo units specifically made for lithium batteries and xs650s.
I would really appreciate some help and direction as frankly, I cannot afford to blow up another battery hahaha!
Thanks in advance guys,