Thanks, But I ride all winter, okay it will only snow for a few weeks, an that time I will go undercover in my car.. So I have no long winter pause, and when I do have it I allways do maintenance on the bike so it will be taken appart. But you have right, it is a good one to check the temperature of the rectifier when I put mine in. When it gets to hot, I can allways find a newer version of a bike with a bigger dynamo. About that charger, they are a bit expensive... Ultrabatt tells its charger is 14.4V-3A and 45Watt. When I look at a laptop ion charger it tells me the same, 14.4V-3A-45Watt, but I can buy 4 of those for the cost of 1 motor charger. When I take my lab power supply and put it on 14.4V and 3A and put it on the battery for 30minutes, I will have charged it? The inside print protects it for overcharging, and the rectifier inside my bike does the same, in my bike it goes even to 14.8volt. It must be something simple. All the different web shops tell as little ass possible about the charging, they tell the marketing bullshit to get it sold, but wil not give any info about how it works, so it must be simple and they are afraid that we home builders find a sheaper solution.
So when I get it right, you tickle charge a lead acid battery with a very low power for a long time, you can even plug it in for the whole winter. But these ion ones you "tickle charge" by giving it full power for a few minutes.
Yes I think the Ultrabatt chargers are expensive for what they (probably) are. I say probably as I've not taken 1 apart yet but I've built my own LifeP04 chargers too and they are a little cheaper than the Ultrabatt ones. My ones supply a 2A supply with a 14.5v cutoff. That's the basics and there are a few other 'tricks' inside. Certainly battery chargers for lead acid batteries have come on in leaps and bounds over the years and for £50 you can get a clever bit of kit that does everything for lead acid but won't work for lithium. Your lap power supply should be fine to use to charge LifeP04 if you get the settings correct as you've shown. I've not done the 'trickle charge / mains timer' trick for more than a few days just to make sure nothing bad happens and it all appears to be fine. My preference would be to disconnect the battery when the bike is not going to get much use for a month or so and store the battery in a cool, dry place. It should store fine, stay at close to full charge and not even need a top up after a month or 2.
