Battery Tender Tale

[montmil]

Spent a recent afternoon exercising three different bikes: Triumph Trophy, R100S and an R65. Same 22 mile loop on some nice hills and turns. Fine time on each bike savoring their different handling characteristics.

Had completed the R65's turn on the loop and was hewading home when I was pulled over by a Texas Highway Patrol cruiser. Wasn't speeding, license plate current or, what? When one of the Troopers got out, first thing I noticed was he was not wearing his Stetson. Second thing, he was smiling... and pointing to a long electrical cord trailing behind the bike. Ruh Roh.
   In my interest in making time on the three bikes, I had failed to unplug the R65's Battery Tender Jr from the pigtail under the seat. Somewhere along my route, there's a beat up battery charger hiding in the grass.

I ordered a new Battery Tender Jr after searching Amazon for the best price. List price is $39.95 but I found one for under $24.00, no sales tax and free shipping.

The latest Battery Tender Jrs ar a new High Efficiency model that is smaller and far lighter than the ones I already have, have lost and replaced. Guessing there's some magic with a lightweight transformer.

Besides the two Juniors, I have five other chargers. That's seven total and all made in China.

[Bob_Roller]

Two years ago, I had a similar situation !!!!!!
I had the battery maintainer on the oilhead, overnight .
I have an OEM accessory outlet on the bike, plug the pigtail from the charger into the outlet, plug the charger into an extension cord .
Got to work one morning and found 10 feet, about 3 meters of extension cord behind the bike .
When I removed the charger from the bike, I tossed the extension cord to the right side of the bike, but it caught on the right cylinder without me seeing it .
When I got home from work that day found 15 feet, 5 meters of extension cord were outside of my garage door on the driveway !!!!!!!!!!!  

[skippyc]

Gone are the days of transformers they are all electronic and a lot are multi voltage input as well, it makes them cheaper to produce.

[Bob_Roller]

I still have a ' dumb ' charger that I use .
US members may remember a department store in the US. Montgomery Wards .
Got this charger right after getting my '81 R65, in January, '81 .
It's a 1 amp charger, when I used it during the winter, I put it on one of those mechanical timers that you slide out, or pushed in the segments to control the on / off cycle .
I had it set to the minimum, about 20 minutes a day, once a month, I would place a 450 watt 14 volt landing light from a DC-9 aircraft, to discharge the battery to about 60 % of charge .
Didn't have no stinking smart chargers then !!!!!

[nhmaf]

This is why I always run my battery chargers from a bright orange extension cord, and make sure the cord drapes over the seat so I cannot possibly miss it before heading the bike out of the garage!
 

[georgesgiralt]

Hello Montmil,
Your old tender used a plain iron and copper 60 Hz transformer to get from 110V to the 12V needed.
Nowadays, they use a ferrite (iron dust) and copper transformer running at or above 100 kHz frequency.
This has two advantages : first is a reduction in material mass needed (less iron, less copper) and the other one is a much better efficiency which is good for your electricity bill. As they have to convert the 60 Hz line frequency to the high frequency for the converter, they rectify the input voltage to DC. This has an added benefit to allow, often, to make only one version apt to run from 90V to 250V at any line frequency 50 Hz or 60 Hz, so one size fits all....
On my R65 I've fitted the auxiliary plug which is on the left side of the bike so "I do not forget" to unplug the optimate adapter....  Last time I forgot it, it has done a 250 km trip on the side of the bike. I was fortunate enough to have the optimate unplug itself from the adapter. Maybe it does not like the ride I took ?

[Barry]

As Georges points out your new charger uses a switch mode power supply just like the multitude of  phone and laptop chargers.  Basically they electronically increase the input frequency before it goes through a reducing transformer in order to reduce losses.

My charger looks like this so I'm not likely to forget it.

[Tony Smith]

I believe I have a red Remove Before Flight pitot tube cover that may be returned to service.

I predict a session of "what's that funny red thing flapping in the rear view mirror?"

[Tony Smith]

I believe I have a red Remove Before Flight pitot tube cover that may be returned to service.

I predict a session of "what's that funny red thing flapping in the rear view mirror?"

I should point out that I know a guy who planted a Queen Air onto the runway without the benefit of fist "dangling the dunlops", rollout was predictably very short.

Apparently the tower controller repeatedly transmitted "XYZ check wheels" and finally in desperation "XYZ - go round" to no avail.

When questioned by teh accident investigation my friend explained that he had not heard the tower transmissions due to the noise of the master alarm bell in the cockpit.

In fairness to him I should also say that he was coming in on one fan having got a fire warning (also the master alarm bell) and he thought that when the bell went off again that it was a repeat fire alarm, so he concentrated on putting it on the ground and then worrying about it as he was on long final when it went off and he had his hands full with an asymmetric heavily cross-wind landing and just plumb forgot about the wheels....

It was repaired and several years later I  had the luck of doing what was the last revenue flight in what was by then a very, very tired aeroplane (it was originally the King of Tonga's official state aircraft). It gave me much pleasure to taxi it up behind the Hawkers hangar and know that no poor bastard was ever going to have to fly it again.

[Barry]

Very nice, I don't believe I've seen a Benelli single like that in the UK.

Like that black Honda too.

[wilcom]

Like that black Honda too.  

My first bike was a Honda 305 Super Hawk. My second bike was a 650 Norton like the one behind it

Those were the good ol' days