Flat battery due to fog lamps!!! Anyone else?
 

Evening all,

I have fitted a set of hella fog lamps the same as touratech sell, I wired them in iaw the wiring diag, the only difference is I didnt wire in the switch and have the lights on all the time wire into the dipped head light. The problem arose when we road from scotland to hull and both mine and my mate xtz`s both wouldnt start due to the battery being flat? we both fitted the same lights, 55w I believe. I honestly thought the alternator would have kept thing on the right side of okay! So I was wondering if anyone has fitted a heavy duty battery or are your lights through a switch and only on at night etc....

Oh the bikes are 09 models. We took the in line fuse out and had no other trouble on the 2600 mile european trip :)

I plan to fit heated grips and have an aux 12v socket fitted for powering the GPS

cheers
davie

Exactly the same thing happened to me today. After two days of running the fogs and occasional use of the Oxford hotgrips. I came out of Tesco on the way home today to find the battery too low to turn the bike over. Luckely i was only 1/2 a mile from home so i got a jump start battery and started it off that. I dont think it was a regulator fault as no warning lights came up on the dash. Have i got to keep the battery topped up every night with an Optimate?
Mark :(

I've got spot lights fitted, use them every day and never had a problem.
to help the battery cope i turn them off a mile or so from my destination and let the bike tick over for a few mins before turning it off.
all so fitted LED side lights http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/s...Id_165604#dtab and HID headlight.
these mods put less strain on the alternator and so far bike has been fine.

same here, in fact Bigb fitted them... :icon_scoot[1]:

Not sure how much help is this, as I don't have any fog or side lights. However, my dealer told me that the stock bike would need to run about 20 min after starting in order to recharge the amount of battery used for the start. In theory, if one rides it for short distance and needs to start the bike a few times in a short interval, then there may be an issue with the battery not having enough juice. The more the gadgets, i.e. fog lights, perhaps the faster the battery is drained ?

May be worth having a look at the site I linked in this thread

http://www.xt660.com/showthread.php?t=11805

Assuming the figures on there are correct, the Ten doesn't seem to be exactly overburdened with 'spare' electrical capacity.

The Africa Twin had plenty spare electrical capacity but as a result I, and plenty others, cooked the rectifier. Any excess power generated is turned into heat by the rectifier and as such too much can damage it.

So with this in mind I reckon the XTZ with just the correct amount of power is actually a good thing and should increase reliabilty in the long run (have known to be wrong before!) or am at least hoping.

If you keep adding high draw equipment like lights and heated grips then you will have to beef up the system it seems to me.

To get around cooking rectifiers Africa Twin owners used to sometimes install two rectifiers or even sometimes a small fan to aid airflow.

Sure its not easy to increase the power production but this seems to be the way forward for lots of auxillary add ons.

Similar thread going on here :unibrow:


http://www.xt660.com/showthread.php?t=10995&page=4