Charging system

Well, I'm not an engineer, but it is my understanding there is a thing called a voltage regulator (or should be) that is in reality a voltage limiter. I replaced the regulator on my airhead with an adjustable type to increase the voltage for the newer type battery. So my question really is; is the voltage regulator adjustable?

As always, thank you for the replies.

Just to throw an alternate theory or two out there....

Most heated gear uses Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) to control the heat level.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-width_modulation

So two things come to mind.

1) The voltage regulation on the bike may be slow to react when the load repeatedly switches between 0 and say 90W. A one time hit would never be noticed but doing it constantly my be another matter.

2) The noise generated by the rapid rise and fall times of the pulses may be messing with the bike's engine management system. PWM can generate significant interference.

RadioFlyer said:

Just to throw an alternate theory or two out there....

Most heated gear uses Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) to control the heat level.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-width_modulation

So two things come to mind.

1) The voltage regulation on the bike may be slow to react when the load repeatedly switches between 0 and say 90W. A one time hit would never be noticed but doing it constantly my be another matter.

2) The noise generated by the rapid rise and fall times of the pulses may be messing with the bike's engine management system. PWM can generate significant interference.

Click to expand...

Ah. I do use a regulator to separate two "zones" and control the output of heat. I will ditch the regulator as an experiment and see if that is the cause of the surging. Curious the more modern system may be susceptible since my airhead never had this "problem".

Thank you.

Thanks to all who responded. I learned many things, as I always do, by asking questions to those who have experience. Amongst them: 1) The surging motor appears to be connected to having a "zone controller" for heat level(s). Once I disconnected the controller and hooked up the items directly there was no surging at idle. 2) The on display readout is not what is actually happening at the battery. My display never went above 13.8v, when at the battery my digital meter was showing 14.25v. Still low in my opinion but the OEM BMW battery lasted from 2015 and 71k miles. I can't ask for much better than that.

And now thanks again to all. Just like the airhead community you were here to offer suggestions and point me in other ways of thinking. I'm almost 60 yrs old and still find reasons to celebrate riding on two wheels.


Rodney
1984 R100
Original owner
2015 K1600 GT
Happily the second owner
to carry this fine bike forward

Great it worked out.
Thanks for the follow up.
OM

Voltage

14.25 from the alternator should be fine. To assure yourself, read the battery manufacturers manual to see what they consider a charge voltage should be.

Wire size

Pauls1150 said:

The parts fiche also shows the alternator to be rated at 55 amps, so at 12 volts, that's 660 watts of output.
Either the rest of the bike (ignition, lighting, computer, fuel injection, navigation, CD player, refrigerator) pulls enough current to make that "somewhat marginal" - a design issue - or the extra heated gear just pulls too much current.

Also note that the factory often uses the smallest wire they can ("ziss size vire vill pass ziss much current") as a cost- and space-saving method, so installing larger or parallel wiring might help.

And yes, my last five formal job titles at a huge aerospace electronics corporation included the word "engineer".

Click to expand...

Engineers do not consider cost via wire size, it is negligible unless they’re going from a 24 awg to a 0 awg. Wire size as well as circuit breaker size is a factor of the calculated load. In any case the circuit breaker is sized to save the wire, not what it’s connected to.
You obviously were not a electrical engineer, aerospace or not. I’m currently in the middle of wiring my RV7 airplane and am quite aware of the wire sizes required.

Swiss cheese.

PGlaves said:

Nope. Don't need to be. A 90 watt load should never cause a lope in an engine as big as 1600cc. I am glad you like your bike. We all tend to overlook or excuse faults after a $20K investment.

Click to expand...

A "fault" refers to something that causes or is a problem. The slight surge causes no problem, your assertion is baseless.

Duane

gunnert said:

A "fault" refers to something that causes or is a problem. The slight surge causes no problem, your assertion is baseless.

Duane

Click to expand...

Glad you like your bike even if the charging system is faulty.

@pglaves, You win, congratulations. You're a bigger dick than I am. With over 17k posts it's safe to say I'm not the only one that has come to this conclusion.

Duane

gunnert said:

@pglaves, You win, congratulations. You're a bigger dick than I am. With over 17k posts it's safe to say I'm not the only one that has come to this conclusion.

Duane

Click to expand...

I actually intended to apologize. I was being snarky and I admit it. I suspect that the surging is not being caused by a drag on the alternator but rather by the pulsing interfering with the ECU. You might try turning the heated jacket controller all the way up, or connecting the garment directly without the controller. With mine, at least, this is full on without pulsing, so you might see if this smooths out the idle.

Hey Paul, read post 24!

You got snarky with me once, when I first got on this forum. That was before I got to know you a bit. now I realize you just get that way once in a while, like most of us old guys!

We haven't seen what his actual voltage measurements were under the various conditions (and only a scope, not a voltmeter, would reveal spiking), but it's very interesting indeed that pulse width modulation (as RadioFlyer brought up) could be the root cause - the factory certainly cannot design to accommodate every type of accessory out there.

One might think that the pulse going on and off continuously (depending on the heat setting) might create the varying load (and thus the surging), but part of a battery's job is to dampen this type of variation, it's a big capacitor.

Getting a bit technical: If PWM is the culprit, I suspect that it's more likely to be the pulse edges (the rise and fall of the pulse) that could create the issue: these transitions contain a lot of higher-frequency harmonics (called a Fourier series) that first, the battery cannot dampen, and second, these harmonics could also easily be radiating, or be physically conducted to, the bike's computer and/or ignition subsystem, confusing things.

Remember that when the Oilheads came out, the right-side spark plug wire was causing direct interference to the O2 sensor and confusing the computer, and wiring had to be re-routed.

So, it appears that isolating (and/or filtering) the controller power is the way to avoid this.

Happy to hear that my earlier post revealed the PWM controller to be the culprit as opposed to the heated gear load. I agree that of the two modalities that I mentioned the noise introduced by the rapidly rising and falling PWM waveform is the most likely.

So my further suggestion is to try filtering and specifically to apply the same type of filter that has become very common on our electronic devices - the ferrite core or bead.

I would try inserting the bead on the wiring that brings power into the PWM controller as well as the wiring that exits the controller to power the gear.

There are any number of ferrite cores and beads available in Amazon. Without seeing the actual wiring we are speaking of my suggestion would be to purchase a few of the cores that split in half to facilitate insertion of the wires. As is commonly done in such applications I would do one loop through the core if wire length and space permits - otherwise just get the wires passing through the core.

I am sure that one could find YouTube videos to illustrate.

Hope this works. Keep us informed of how you make out as this is a good case study.

Cover the ECU with a top-hat made of tinfoil.

Remote controller

RadioFlyer said:

Happy to hear that my earlier post revealed the PWM controller to be the culprit as opposed to the heated gear load. I agree that of the two modalities that I mentioned the noise introduced by the rapidly rising and falling PWM waveform is the most likely.

So my further suggestion is to try filtering and specifically to apply the same type of filter that has become very common on our electronic devices - the ferrite core or bead.

I would try inserting the bead on the wiring that brings power into the PWM controller as well as the wiring that exits the controller to power the gear.

There are any number of ferrite cores and beads available in Amazon. Without seeing the actual wiring we are speaking of my suggestion would be to purchase a few of the cores that split in half to facilitate insertion of the wires. As is commonly done in such applications I would do one loop through the core if wire length and space permits - otherwise just get the wires passing through the core.

I am sure that one could find YouTube videos to illustrate.

Hope this works. Keep us informed of how you make out as this is a good case study.

Click to expand...

How would you install your “fix” as most K1600’s go wireless control and use a remote controller mounted on the handlebar?

d martin said:

How would you install your “fix” as most K1600’s go wireless control and use a remote controller mounted on the handlebar?

Click to expand...

Well if you read the OP this thread is about problems caused by the installation of aftermarket heated gear controllers and the filtering gets applied to it to reduce the emitted EMI.

Sent from my SM-T813 using Tapatalk

Maybe we need more little tin-foil hats to cover sensitive electronic devices.