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I fitted Oxford heat hand grips to my bike and they have an intelligent gizmo which detects if the battery is low and switches off the grips. It is supposed to stop you flattening the battery if you forget to turn the grips off when you leave the bike. Well they switched off while riding so I thought I'd get the multimeter out and measure the battery.
With the motor idling I was getting 13.5V and when I reved it would drop to 13.2V. This was with nothing on except the headlight which I don't get a choice about. I did disconnect the headlight and it went up to 13.8V. The minimum standard in the manual is 14.1V. Cleaning all the terminals didn't make a difference.
So what I did was splice an extra earth and power cable between the battery and regulator. The white wire out of the regulator is the output so that goes to the positive terminal of the battery and the black with yellow trace is the earth and that goes to the negative terminal on the battery. On the positive lead I used a fuse to protect the wiring. The wire I used has a 2.9mm cross sectional area. I now get 14.3V at the battery with the headlight running and engine at idle. With the grips on full power the voltage drops to 13.6V but when it is reved is goes to 14.2V.
Now the heated grips don't shut themselves off when riding, cheap fix considering I was thinking I needed to upgrade my stator.
I hope your solution doesn't make the stator the weak link.
The mediocre ground was noted years ago. The solution was to add a more direct ground. Many, myself included, have done this to assure the increased power delivery, the 14.2 volts. Not read where anyone has wasted a stator. I know I haven't.
I take it for granted Kawasaki did something to deal with it back in the teens. My bike was an 09.
I have run AME heated grips on my 650 Versys and ZRX1200. The AME grips also turn themselves off automatically and so far no issues with either bike.
I had Oxford heated grips on my Concours 14 which has a powerful charging system. I had the same problem with the Oxfords turning off at idle speed on start up if set above the lowest setting. I adapted by just remembering to keep the setting on low until at speed.
I think the problem is that on start up the starter motor pulls voltage down below 14v momentarily. As I said I think the Concours 14 has a great starting/charging system but I have had three other bikes, a Honda and two Ducatis that had insufficient guage wiring for the starting and charging system and upgrading the woring solved problems.
It wasn't unusual for Japanese bike charging systems to not put out enough power at idle to keep the battery charged up, but over around 2000 rpm they were doing the job. I don't know what models or makes, just that they didn't have enough output at idle. The topic came up when there were riders who would start their bikes up and let them idle for long times to "keep the battery charged".
Before mod, 13.1 V at idle and 12.9 V at RPM.
Added 12ga ground direct from R/R connector to the grounded bolt nearby, along with a piggytail to reconnect the original ground.
After mod 14.2 V at RPM.
Magic. Thank you.
12-11-2022, 03:54 PM
