So, you wanna use a fancy lithium battery in that older bike...

[DesmoDog]

Yeah, lithium iron batteries are sexy. Everybody who thought the box was empty when they first picked one up, raise their hand... I'm right there with you. 

 

tldr version; Old regulator bad. Voltage high. Really high. Victims included fancy new battery, the ECU, and a few other things I've forgotten. Fix is modern MOSFET regulator. Moral of the story - bikes without MOSFET regulators should not be running lithium batteries. Lithium batteries are fragile.

 

The long verison:

Of course when the time came to replace the battery in my 1991 Ducati I thought oh yeah, gotta have it. Smaller, lighter, much more better. I ponied up the cash and ordered a fancy new battery complete with built in circuitry to protect the battery from over charging and over discharging. Either case will kill a lithium battery. 

I got the battery, fit it to the bike, and away I went. About 230 miles later, the bike suddenly died. Then started running again. Ok, it's a Ducati, give it a minute. About ten seconds later the bike died for good this time. I pulled over to the side of the road and as I was removing the seat I noticed a small whisp of smoke. Uh oh...

Soon enough smoke was POURING out from under the fairing. Fun fact soon discovered. You can not remove an 851's fairing with the tools supplied in the factory toolkit. For reasons unbeknownst to me, Ducati felt the need to add two very small allen screws holding the fairing together in the front. Time to stand back and hope nothing starts on fire. Luckily this was all happening in front of a fellow motorhead's house. He told me he was looking out the window and when the smoke show started he thought "Wow, that's not the radiator". He came outside, found out what I needed, and got the tools to pull the fairing off. It would have been too late by then if it had been a fire but I still felt better getting them pulled off. 

At this point I had ID'd the issue as the battery. It was easy to see because the battery was arcing and smoking and melting down. FWIW: The smoke from a lithium battery that is melting down is absolutely horrid. It can't be good for you. Along with worrying that the bike would go up in flames, I was pondering the fact that these batteries are used in aircraft. Holy crap. If this was happening inside an aircraft you'd be seriously screwed. Mental note - if I ever build an airplane, do NOT put the battery in the same cabin as the people. The smoke REEKS, as in I had to leave parts of the bike outside until I could clean them because of how bad it was even after the incident. 

I have a short video of the show but I apparently can't link it here because it's not hosted on a secure site. I also can't figure out how to embed photos within the post but I'm guessing I can't do that for the same reason. I'll attach them at the end. 

So what happened? I contacted the battery company and sent the battery back to them. They found that the bike was pumping too much voltage into the battery. I went and checked the voltage  and when it hit 16 I stopped testing. Anything over 14.5 volts (I think? it's listed in the battery literature) is too much. I asked about the battery protection and they told me that it was only good to something like 60 volts and my bike must have exceeded that. I also found out that they have upped the protection since then. 

I'm no electrical engineer so I may have some of the details wrong, but from what I read when a lithium iron battery gets too much voltage fed into it the internals begin plating themselves. Eventually this plating causes an internal short. Once that happens, it's game on until all the smoke is gone. Nothing you can do but stand back and watch the show. 

The fix was to install a modern mosfet voltage regulator. Google it - there are sources available. I also installed a volt meter on the bike that shows different color LEDs depending on the voltage, they make them specifically for monitoring lithium batteries. I replaced the battery with the same kind that melted down and after a couple years of limited use have had no issues. 

After the fact I also discovered the ECU had been damaged, along with a couple other electrical parts. The ECU problem revealed itself with a rattle. When I pulled the cover I found some electrical component bouncing around inside, having unsoldered itself from the board. Further investigation showed the liberated part had something to do with overvoltage protection. 

So to sum it up, lithium batteries require modern charging systems with mosfet regulators. When they meltdown from too much voltage, it's a huge mess. Letting them discharge too much kills them too but with less of a mess. 

 

 

 

[Sir Fallsalot]

That's  bad. I've been reading about Li batteries and came to the conclusion i don't want one a long time ago, they also don't like the cold and you may have to do a warming process before they will start your bike which can be turning the ignition on with the lights on for a short while before pressing the starter
This is an interesting read especially the bit about damaging your regulator rectifier 

https://www.rexs-speedshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/LiFePO4-Need-to-Know-Facts.pdf

[Pedro]

It mustn´t be cool to see smoke starting to appear only to anticipate whatever dark magic had your bike at it's mercy.

 

Since I imagine you ride it less than frequently, why not just have a normal battery with a tender connected to it inside the garage?

[Tym]

My shorai has been brilliant, doesnt need a trickle charger all winter and it weighs less then a feather, just the weight savings alone is huge...never had a problem in cold weather. just saying lithium isnt enough lithium iron so far are the way to go

[DesmoDog]

On 19/10/2020 at 10:41, BusBoy said:

tbh, there isn't a battery alive that will take 60 plus Volts and not burst into flames. Somewhere in your explanation there is some truth but it's clouded by misunderstanding. At least where I'm reading it. The fault was not the battery, your regulator and rectifier failed. End of. 

 

I completely agree it was the regulator that caused the drama and didn't mean to imply anything different. FWIW I replaced the battery with the the same kind that melted after I replaced the regulator with a modern mosfet unit. 

Kinda curious how you got I was blaming the battery when it starts out with:

"tldr version; Old regulator bad. Voltage high. Really high. Victims included fancy new battery, the ECU, and a few other things I've forgotten. Fix is modern MOSFET regulator. Moral of the story - bikes without MOSFET regulators should not be running lithium batteries. Lithium batteries are fragile."

And end with "So to sum it up, lithium batteries require modern charging systems with mosfet regulators..."

Unless you keyed in on lithium batteries are fragile. In which case, they certainly are more needy than an AGM or lead acid battery. 

 

In my case it took a lot of volts to kill it. In brands without built in protection it doesn't take any more voltage than an old regulator might allow and a lead acid would tolerate much better. 

[DesmoDog]

On 16/10/2020 at 10:04, Tym said:

My shorai has been brilliant, doesnt need a trickle charger all winter and it weighs less then a feather, just the weight savings alone is huge...never had a problem in cold weather. just saying lithium isnt enough lithium iron so far are the way to go

The problem is "lithium" is tossed around as the universal term. When I bought my last battery (for my RSV-R) I looked at a LOT of different brands and some of them even interchanged "lithium ion" and "lithium iron" in their own literature. 

[Tym]

4 minutes ago, DesmoDog said:

 some of them even interchanged "lithium ion" and "lithium iron" in their own literature. 

Thats not good. 

[Tym]

Seems you have the talents to build your own batteries Bruce, plenty of vids on how. Its not rocket science to do it safe.

 

[Tym]

4 hours ago, BusBoy said:

That's a great vid

The price is coming down, this DIY stuff is amazing...some good commerical stuff too from the like of BattleBorn for RV/Boat/Solar.