Hi everyone I've checked with admin and Matt was happy to let me introduce myself and my business. My name is Paul and I run a bike business called Black & White Bikes. Before I say what the business is all about, a little about me.... Been 'into bikes' for around 30 years now and have tried out most aspects of it. Commuted to work on a bike in London 'Ran blood' voluntarily around the hospitals of south London Toured around Europe with my wife on the back of a VFR800vtec Played with MX bikes and pretty much always ended up in A&E Tried to learn to wheelie on an XL185 (and failed) Fell in love with track days on a ZX7R Went club racing on various bikes Just hung up my racing leathers as I feel it's time to 'grow up!' I set up B&W Bikes over 4 years ago and it was a very steady start which I have been slowly building on year on year. We don't have a high street shop to try to keep overheads as low as possible in the early years. We specialize in track and race bikes but we do also have road bike customers. Please feel free to check out the website - Black & White Bikes - Home Page I am happy to offer a 10% discount to all forum members (whenever possible) but we are not a 'Demon Tweaks' style mail order shop and do not hold huge amounts of stock. We are dealers for a very wide range of products from Nitron shocks, R&G, GB Racing, Sprint Dampers, Lightech, SES, Silkolene to name just a few. We are also very interested in Lithium batteries having previously developed our own brand but now we sell the Ultrabatt models - check 'em out they are awesome. Predominantly we are a workshop where customers can get their bikes serviced, repaired, worked on and improved. Hopefully the customer care, advice and value for money come before having a couple of million pounds worth of stock in a warehouse. I'm a big fan of the late model Fireblade and I have a plan to hopefully have 1 available to hire out in the future as a track day hire bike. It would also be a rolling advert for the business and something we would use to offer instruction and training on track too. If all goes well I may need to get a few more! We recently put together a great John McG replica bike for a customer which I have yet to ride myself but seeing as it is dripping in Ohlins, Brembo and all manner of great stuff its actually pretty difficult to pries the owner off it to blag a test ride. I'll try to pop by the forum as much as possible just to add comment, advice or just have a laugh with you all. Cheers Paul.
Welcome to the forum Paul, and strange u mentioned about the Ultrabatt Lithium batts as I was only looking at them this week, So a few questions about this Batt, I know I need a spacial battery conditioner for them. My blade is used for track and fast road riding. no alarm and always on a Batt conditioner at home in the garage. if I got a ultrabattwhich model would I need, and other than the Huge weight loss what other benefits or problems may I have using these battery's on my blade?
Hello, nice name! Got similar questions to Remal... I currently have an Optimate 3+... if I went for a Lithium battery when mine dies (which wont be long) can I still use my current charger?
No I believe you need a special charger for these. :: Performance Optional Ultrabatt Ultracharger - Special Lithium Battery Charger - Required to charge all Ultrabatt Batteries from our extensive line of Lightweight Batteries Lightweight Lithium Batteries Parts for 2012 HONDA CBR 1000 Fireblade 08 bi
Hi chaps 1 day all new bikes will come with LiFeP04 batteries as standard but until then the Ultrabatts are the best thing available. 08 onwards Blades do have a very small standard lead battery because Honda obviously wanted to keep the weight down as much as possible. So they did that by designing the whole starter system with a small battery in mind. Pros and cons with that theory are that you get a light weight bike but the lead acid battery is working hard. But also it means you can, at a pinch, run the smaller UB200 battery if you wanted to save every last milligram. But they do actually recommend the UB400 normally and if its a road bike then I would definitely say run the UB400. UB200 - 447 grams - 114 x 62 x 81mm - £125 UB400 - 728 grams - 114 x 62 x 81mm - £175 10% discount for forum members as I say on those RRP prices. Group buys of 10+ units and I'll do 15% discount Ultrabatt do a special charger for £59.99 (again I'll do 10% discount on that if bought with a battery) I do still have B&W chargers in stock which are virtually the same thing and will be £49.99 (minus 10%) so just over £10 cheaper. You can't unfortunately charge these batteries on a trickle charger, you do need the special ones which are fast chargers as it happens. We found you can leave them connected to a bike if you put a mains timer on them and just gave them a 15 minute charge once a week. Hope that helps Paul.
Cheers Paul, so the Lithium battery chargers are not like batt conditioners then. I gather they don't have memory issues being Litium. very interested at that price for the UB400. and would be getting at charger as well. i gather the cheaper charger is the same just the name thats different?
Whilst being far better, I thought the whole issue with Lithium is that it has memory issues, unlike wet batteries?
The great thing with the Ultrabatts which makes them stand out is that they have a battery management chip in them. This allows the whole battery to be balance charged every time. Lithium Iron Phosphate suffers very little from memory effects, that was predominantly a ni-cad problem. So the 'conditioning' part of charging is actually in the battery not the charger. The charger just needs to supply the right voltage at a decent rate and cut off at the right voltage.
Hello, I foud this topic while I was surching Ulltrabatt on Google, but I can't folow you lot... I do not understand the use of a charger.. The bettery comes charged. And when I put it one year somewhere on a shelf it will stil have the same power. I change it with the stock battery, so the engne will keep it charged....? Or not? Bycause of the microchip inside the battery it can not overcharge, so when my rectifier gives max voltage it will charge automaticly while driving. Like a normal accid. I have changed all light bulbs with LED, so when I forget to put on the head lamp the rectifier gets so hot I allmost burn my fingers, therefore I think the higher charge Amp will be no problem. Or am I wrong? When this is correct a charger would only be for when the rectifier or dynamo does not work properly. Or not?
I've got a Black & Decker Battery Kick Starter at home, Okay, it cost over a ton, but I can leave that for years and it will still have enough charge in it to start a car. How does it do that if my puny thing on the bike dies after a week or two if left?
Hi there Longjohn and TonyBlue; thanks for the questions. Maybe we should start a proper thread somewhere regarding these Ultrabatt batteries, but for the time being I'm happy to reply here. The Ultrabatts (and other brands of Lithium battery) will be a straight swap for the stock lead acid battery. They do only come in the 3 sizes so they may be a different shape and size to the standard one and also the terminal layout could be different so you may need to spend a bit of time getting the leads to move to a new location. Lithium batteries will work in exactly the same way on the bike as a lead acid battery, in that the generating / charging system produces electricity to firstly power up the ignition and electrical systems and then use any surplus to charge the battery. When the battery is fully charged and electricity is still being generated then it is sent to the regulator / rectifier to be dissipated as heat. Just as a comment, late model CBR's have a MOSFET R/R rather than a SHUNT type R/R which is a much better piece of kit and should run much cooler. Replacing a SHUNT R/R for a MOSFET R/R is something I've done on a few bikes to improve the electrical system, especially if the old SHUNT type has already failed. SHUNT R/R's tend to fail from overheating. A standard bike system should charge to 14.4v (give or take a little) and this is perfect for a lithium battery as they are fully charged at this voltage. A major difference between lead acid and lithium is that when they get down to around 12.5v the lithium will have lost most of its power and the lead acid will still be able to start the bike. But in normal day to day use the lithium battery should never get that low anyway so the problem should never arise. If you use your bike every day then a battery charger should never be required and in fact a lead acid battery will last many many years. The problems occur as batteries have been shrunk in size to make the bikes as light as possible and bikes get laid up over winter. The optimate style trickle charger is great for lead acid batteries on bikes that are not used that frequently and can be left plugged in all the time and will keep a lead acid battery topped up, ready for use at any time. Unfortunately, you can't treat a lithium battery the same way. That type of battery charger normally only charges to 13.5v volts and so will not get a lithium battery up to full power. Also, lithium batteries prefer to be fast charged and not trickle charged and so a lithium battery charger is quite different to a lead acid battery charger for these 2 main reasons. A trick we have tried with a lithium battery charger is where you can leave it plugged into a mains power timer unit to give it a short burst for a few minutes a day. The best thing to do with any battery is to remove it from a bike when it is being laid up over winter. There will always be some kind of minimal electrical discharge when it is connected to the bikes electrical system that will slowly but surely reduce the voltage in the battery. This, plus the fact your Black & Decker is much, much bigger than your bike battery, is why it can survive so much longer and still keep a charge. I hope that helps with your queries, but I'm happy to help further if I can.
