How dumb can I get?

I reciently repaired a 101 Scout that had a Dyna ignition added that was useing more current than the generator would put out. So I checked the coils and then corrected the primary ignition inpedance witch reduced the ignition draw to a acceptable 3.75 amps. Then I installed a Bosh regulator from a no battery Sportster because of the responce time and adjustabilty. His battery was cooked so I borrowed a battery from another project. It ran great for 3 weeks Including a 25 mile ride with lights to my house. Then the week before he was suposed to pick it up I rode it to dinner just to keep the battery up and it just died like the key was off. So I checked spark and fuel booth looked good so I pushed it home and checked battery voltage then kicked it over 10 or 15 times with the plugs laying on the heads an the spark looked great cleaned the carb in desperation still no start! Ocasionly it would hit one time strong but usually didn't even pop.I rechecked everything and then put him off for a week and just bearly got it figgured out in that length of time. I'm courious as to what every one would have tried so I'll wait till tomorrow to share what I found. (hint it wasn't the Dyna)
Dusty

My neighbor cooked a new battery in his pa when he rode from Pa to Myrtle Beach. I got another new battery out, checked his charging rate, and made him adjust his Bosch down to 13.5 volts. Battery is doing fine now.

HOOT

Hoot:
You are pretty close even though the battery would read 12.65 with the ignition on or when kicking with the plugs out the voltage would drop to about 2 volts when the engine shook the bike. Some conection inside the battery opens when it shakes. So when I pulled both plugs it didn't shake enough to loose voltage. The no battery regulator has to be turned up when used with a battery as it comes set to 12.1 or so. Have you figured out why they set it to 16 amps when the gen was 10 amps?
Dusty

Probably just not meant to be used with a battery.

Dusty
My neighbors was pumping about 15.5V, literaly cooking the acid out. I suspect that the 16 amps is probably for overkill, for the voltage dropoff at idle. Seen a few guys that have stuffed car regulators in they're charging systems and simply fry the armature. They look identical (electric start reg) but they try to pull 30 amps outa a 10 amp generator. that'll cook em in about 5 miles. It's been a while but the only difference I could find was an ohmage reading in the primary winding of the cutout. Pretty sure it was the cutout, it's been a while.

Everytime I've seen 2 volts from a battery it was an open cell. Seen lots of open cells before. On my 63, I had to push in on the battery terminal to start it, then it would run off the generator till the next stop. I ran a wood screw into it to hook the terminal back on to the cell

You can find which cell by putting your leads into side by side cells, checking the voltage between them. you also can check each cell condition for sulfating up too.

I had a good one with a new sparkplug once. Four cylinder car, ran good on the road, but only ran on 3 cylinders at idle, pull the plugs, all looked good, excellent compression test, new plug wires, cap and rotor, carburated engine, clipped the timing light on to it's wire and it showed it was sparking at idle. It wasn't till I held the plug, threads down, that I saw the center insulator slide down over the center electrode, masking the spark.

HOOT

Hoot:
The extra amperage is to allow for startup current surge. Any time something is turned on it has extra draw for a little while. It dosen't last long enough to hurt the generator. Of course if you get a short its gona melt the armature but Harley wouldn't mind selling you one.The early 12 volt with out battery used a 10 amp delco and they browned out every time that something was turned on.
Dusty