Technical Update

As the RD 350 battery has just about had it, I set about investigating it's replacement. The custom made race batteries are made out of Lithium MH or Cadmium, and the newest technology are the LiFe cells, however these were far too expensive for the 350, so I started looking at ways I could buy the individual cells and make one up.

I found a site in France that sells the cells, but for only a couple of Euros more will solder them together to make higher voltage units. So I ended up buying one of these.
The site is Maximusracing and he specialises in providing high quality battery cells for scale models or for race bikes!

I calculated that I am pulling about 1.5 amps with the electronic ignition, with peaks a little higher when the valves need turning. So I went for a 4 cell unit which generated 2.3 Amp/hours of energy, easily enough to do more than 1.5 hours racing without charging the system.

I am trying to find ways in which I can now remove the alternator all together, but until I can replace the ignition pickup with something else, I have to keep the rotor, but I could remove completely the stator plate, loosing a kg in the process, not counting the back EMF, from the generation (non) of charging current.

For the moment I will simply replace the lead/acid battery with the LiFe one, letting the bikes charging system look after the LiFe charging. This could last as long as a lead/acid battery, however with multiple cells you have to be careful to balance the charge in each of the 4 cells, otherwise there will always be one or other cells that are discharged first or fully charged first, and this apparently is not good for the lifetime of the battery, so once in a while I will use a balanced battery charger (39 Euros straight from sunny China) to rejuvenate the LiFe cells.

The standard lead/acid battery weighs in at a porky 2.3 kgs, whilst the LiFe cells are just over 300 gms - a saving of 2 kgs. This will either allow me to drink more beer at Xmas or go faster if my weight remains the same! Of course I should mention that the price is inversly proportional to the weight - a good lead/acid replacement would cost around 25-30 Euros, and the LiFe cells cost 89 Euros.