Motorbicycling 6V electrical system?

velardejose

velardejose

New Member
Hi
If I hook a 6v bike batt to the white wire, could I use 6v hardware?
Like motorcycle headlights fe
Thanks in advance
 
I've been pondering this idea myself and I think you will probably need a voltage regulator on the white wire to prevent overcharging and possibly a diode to keep the battery from feeding back into the magneto. Hopefully Norman will see this. He has done some work using the white wire to power a light. It might be easier to use a motorcycle battery to run a regular bicycle light system directly then just charge the battery at home periodically.
 
I think I remember seeing a kit somewhere a while back that used a 6v battery for the lights, and the white wire would trickle charge the batt when the lights weren't in use.
 
jasonh said:
I think I remember seeing a kit somewhere a while back that used a 6v battery for the lights, and the white wire would trickle charge the batt when the lights weren't in use.
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I'm trying to find that now!!!

I want to purchase one ASAP as it's getting darker and darker here and I don't care to be buying batteries every week!

:ride:
 
I use a 6v power weels battery and just recharge it. But it would be nice to know if the white wire could be used to charge it .
 
then a regulating Ic which'el run off only your battery the package with a seperate input for its power then series its circuit inbat, the ac/dc bridge, Ic, and finally battery. and run your lights or what have you from your battery. if you get one with a regul;ator/ cuttoff it'll stop charging for you but the otherones have a range they burn your battery or theIC 9itself) up because the constant charge with no drain so check for battery temp. Some cheaper IC packages actually have an input for the battery thermistor which is axtually cheap its self. The mag white wire only gives back 3 watts so if you run your lights a 1/4 of the time and they draw 12 watts youd be ok cause the charging of the additional day use of 3/4x..Yup Im the Man. Heh Heh
 
you can buy a 6-9v dc generator/dyno at dick smith/ tandy eletronics aprox size is
23.7mm times 26.9mm for about $4 aus, sure their would be equivlent in the states.

very very light to role the axle and plenty of places to station it

another alternative is the generator out of the self charging winding torches that you c at the dept stores just extented the wires from the circut board to the bulb an splice in a switch that can be put on your handle bars
 
Finfan said:
Have you put an oscilloscope on the magneto output? I've done electronics for a while so I'm wondering what type of waveform it has.
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I have been too lazy to hook up my own scope, but I read a post by a guy who did and he described the output (going by memory) as "3-50 volts peak to peak and not very clean" or something like that.

To power off the white wire directly the challenge is to find a bulb that will give enough light at low voltage, not burn out from the high voltage, and most important not draw enough power to rob the spark plug. I have a cheap generator light to start my own investigation powering it off the white wire but have not had time to hook it up. Some people report that a cheap Walmart Bell generator set can run off the white wire, others have replaced the bulb and found the right combination by trial and error. I am thinking that if it gives enough light, I still may need to regulate the voltage to keep the bulb intact.

I have seen various configurations to use the white wire. I have heard you can rectify it then use a battery as a sort of voltage regulator to power LED lights and such but it will eventually burn out the battery unless you put in a real circuit to protect it.
 
You could just buy one of my bulbs or lights and be done with it so you can work on something more fun like squeaking a little more power out of the engine.rotfl
 
So does anybody that's done the trial and error testing to find the perfect bulb to run off the white wire have a number for us to save a brother some grief?
 
Norman said:
You could just buy one of my bulbs or lights and be done with it so you can work on something more fun like squeaking a little more power out of the engine.rotfl
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Hey Norm, how much are just the bulbs? I want to get a retro looking setup for Motoschwinn II
 
Norman said:
You could just buy one of my bulbs or lights and be done with it so you can work on something more fun like squeaking a little more power out of the engine.rotfl
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Norm, no offense or anything, but I personally would be more interested in an actual electrical system than just a bulb that works. It would allow you to run brighter lights, taillights/blinkers and not have to worry about drawing too much power from the mag...

For the casual rider, I'm sure your bulbs would work (heck I would like to get one of yours anyway), but for those of us that use our bikes to commute every day (or just me anyway), it'd be nice to have something a little bit better....
 
If you are really in need of finding out next time you ride past an auto-electrician business stop in to work shop (not recption) and ask them if they can quickly test the out put.. will take them all of about 25 secs and i think MrAlaska is pretty close when ive talk to Auto Elecs before they said a normal car alternator puts out upto 80v

i found pretty much all of them will do it for free specialy if they like your bike
 
Finfan said:
I've been pondering this idea myself and I think you will probably need a voltage regulator on the white wire to prevent overcharging and possibly a diode to keep the battery from feeding back into the magneto. Hopefully Norman will see this. He has done some work using the white wire to power a light. It might be easier to use a motorcycle battery to run a regular bicycle light system directly then just charge the battery at home periodically.
Click to expand...

divide the dropped voltage by the LED current to get the value of the dropping resistor. If you divide volts by amps, you get the resistor value in ohms. If you divide volts by milliamps, you get the resistor value in kilo-ohms or k.

Example: 6 volt supply, 3.4 volt LED, 12 milliamps. Divide 2.6 by .012. This gives 217 ohms. The nearest standard resistor value is 220 ohms.

If you want to operate the 3.4 volt LED from a 6 volt power supply at the LED's "typical" current of 20 ma, then 2.6 divided by .02 yields a resistor value of 130 ohms. The next higher popular standard value is 150 ohms.

If you want to run a typical 3.4 volt LED from a 6 volt supply at its maximum rated current of 30 ma, then divide 2.6 by .03. This indicates 87 ohms. The next higher popular standard resistor value is 100 ohms. Please beware that I consider the 30 ma rating for 3.4-3.5 volt LEDs to be optimistic.

One more thing to do is to check the resistor wattage. Multiply the dropped voltage by the LED current to get the wattage being dissipated in the resistor. Example: 2.6 volts times .03 amp (30 milliamps) is .078 watt. For good reliability, I recommend not exceeding 60 percent of the wattage rating of the resistor. A 1/4 watt resistor can easily handle .078 watt. In case you need a more powerful resistor, there are 1/2 watt resistors widely available in the popular values.

still confused? read all of it here L.E.D Basics; gaining an understanding of how to work with L.E.D.s
 
has anyone thought of using two 6 volt batteries hooked in series-parallel? this would allow charging from the 7.2 volts from the white wire, and allow the use of 12volt lights.
 
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