Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
Ok, this is really extremely cool. I ended up calling ElectroSport the other day, to see if they sold a high-output stator (part of the electrical power generation system on a bike) for the Ninja 250. They didn't exactly, but I ended up talking to the lead engineer for a while.
One thing he said which immediately piqued my interest was that he had a rig set up to test stock alternators and find their actual output. I asked if he could produce a graph of RPM vs. output, and he said he could. I was even more interested.
I really want to have that information available via the Ninja 250 board's FAQ section, and I really want to do a survey of the current used on the bike, to isolate how much power is actually required to run the bike. This will ideally result in a graph or chart which shows how much power is available at every RPM from idle to redline.
As a result of this discussion, I've got some of the folks on the Ninja 250 board searching their spare parts bins, looking for the parts in question. I expect that by the end of next week, we'll have a complete set of parts at least on their way to ElectroSport, if not actually in their hands.
Let me explain why this is so neat. Most motorcycles (with the notable exception of many recent BMWs and a few others) come with what may be safely termed anemic power generation systems. Just enough to power the bike itself, and really very little extra. So if you want to add lights, to improve your visibility, or heated clothing or whatever, you run the risk of overloading the electrical system, which usually leads to a dead battery (and thus a dead bike) right in the worst conditions -- after all, who is going to turn on all their lights and heated clothing because it's a bright sunny day?
This leads to a perpetual problem, of balancing the bike's power generating potential against what you really need to have powered. A GPS takes almost no power, but extra lights, even little running lights, add up really fast. Heated clothing, particularly that which uses an old-style rheostat thermostat, can be a huge drain. For instance, on the Ninja 250, the accepted wisdom is that you've got maybe 55 or 60 watts of extra power available at freeway speeds. That number goes down as RPM goes down.
Of course, this is accepted wisdom, but is not actually empirical fact. Kawasaki claims the alternator puts out 17 amps (or about 235 watts, depending on how exactly you measure things). However, like everything else, that may be an over- or understatment, to make the bike look better than it is. Plus, they only give the rating at one RPM; what's the output at 8k RPM? At 4k RPM? At idle?
So, in the first place, it would be really fabulous to know how much power the alternator is actually putting out at a given RPM, which ES says they can do. That's what initially got me so excited.
But then there's this carrot: they say they can produce a new stator which produces around 100 watts over the stock part(!). The downside (if you want to call it that) is that the power below a certain RPM, like 2500 or 3500, will be "low" -- ie, about the same as stock. Darn?
Here's the real kicker. The stock stator, from a slightly discounted online distributor, is $300. The proposed price for these high-power stators from ES is between $130 and $150. So, let's see here... If I break mine, I can pick the low-output part from the manufacturer, or the high-output part for half the price? Gee, that's a tough choice.
The flip side of all this is that I have no idea who ElectroSport is. I've heard of them before, but I've heard of lots of companies, and I don't trust all of them just because I know the name. Right now, ES is a complete unknown to me -- I've heard neither negative nor positive of them.
I think I'll be able to gauge them somewhat by how they handle this parts testing operation. It's free to us, but we're also giving them free access to parts they'd otherwise have to buy. We're allowing them to develop a product to meet a market segment they didn't previously meet, which is good for them.
I already have a good feeling just from talking to the two guys on the phone. I spoke with their salesman, Paul, and their head engineer, Ritzo. They both had their heads on straight, and knew what they were talking about, as far as I could fact-check what they said. I don't have any reason so far to question them, and am proceeding on the theory that they'll be good until I see proof otherwise.
Suffice it to say that I won't be putting any pre-order money down, but if they do actually produce a high-power stator, chances are good that I'll buy one. I'd love to have an extra 100W over stock power available to me.
Posted at 22:47 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater