6 Volt motor bike battery.

[malcscott]

Hi, my 1957 BSA Bantam 175 uses a 6 volt lead/acid battery. This battery is knackerd and i was thinking about re-stuffing it with ni-cad cells. Any ideas about this method?? Malc

[Refugee]

The motorbike will have a charging circuit to suit lead acid construction batteries.
A lot of modification will be required to use other battery types.
Motorbike batteries should not be that difficult to obtain.

[Michael Watterson]

You can still buy 6V Lead Acid bike batteries. Plenty of vendors, both regular and eBay.

Both the SLA 6V (more expensive anyway) and NiMH (you would want five) would be short lived. The voltage doesn't rise sharply on NiMH to switch to low trickle charge.

SLA rarely last long in a Motorbike as they get discharged too deep and charged too quickly.

[Wolfie]

Nicads are a nono for Vehicle charging systems without some modification, but there is a good range of SLA batteries on the market designed for vehicle use.

[malcscott]

What is an SLA battery?

[crustytv]

Sealed Lead Acid

http://www.battery-force.co.uk/category ... eries.html

[Michael Watterson]

The "motive" SLA are usually only suitable for Electric motors and separate charger, not the charging in a Motor bike. They are different design to the SLA used in Burgler Alarms and Emergency lights etc.

There are actually 3 kinds of SLA, 2 x gel and 1 x mat and as best as I can figure both the Gel kind and Mat Kind originated in 1932 for portable valve radios! By 1937 all new design portables used sealed gel cells in a plastic case, but likely different Gel and Plastic to that used today.

My 1929 McMichael Suitcase has acid burns on inside of case as it used a conventional glass cased "Wet" type lead acid pretty much like one cell of a 1950s motorbike battery (which is 3 cells).

The "Wet" type cells are still best performance & life which is why they are still used for cars, trucks and road-bikes (Racing bikes may be more exotic on batteries).

Both 6V Bike and even 6V car batteries are still made and available.