Quote:
Originally Posted by sickopsycho
But what about the charging system in our bikes? They charge pretty heavily, would you have to pull the battery is you drained it down cranking and cranking (if, for example, you had to refill your carb bowls)?
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If you have to do a lot of cranking, the LiFe batteries will do fine. Of course you can drain any battery if you crank it long enough. BTW, the issue with filling float bowls is why there is a position on the fuel petcock that says "prime". It allows you to fill the float bowls without cranking the motor. (At least on the newgen bikes there is a prime position.)
Also, a characteristic of the LiFe batteries is that when they are cooler they can crank the bike a little bit slower. Not to worry though. The battery gets warmer as the eletricity gets flowing through it and it will actually crank stronger as it gets warmer.
They work fine maintaining a charge with the bike's electrical system. It's when you drain them flat or nearly flat and you need to use a battery charger to bring it back to full voltage with a regular battery charger that you can cause problems.
No matter if a battery is lead-acid or Li-Fe, any bike or car's charging system is only designed to maintain the charge on a battery that is already near full voltage anyway. They are not designed to charge a weak battery.
Invisibill is right about the MOSFET type voltage regulators being the way to go. They are better no matter what type of battery you run.
I had a diode type of voltage regulator fail in my SV650 racebike and it overcharged my LiFe battery. It would have overcharged a lead acid battery just the same. I switched to a MOSFET type regulator after that.