Yeah I'm sure you know all of that and I'm not trying to imply that you don't. Mysoap box was for whomever might benefit from it. In retrospect, I shouldn't havemadethat small piece of your mosaic look like the center piece of my argument...or that I was trying teach youanything Itjust spurred thought and I wrote[8D]

+1 on the lithium batteries. I've known about that problem since the mid-eighties when they put big warnings in our operating manuals about rescue sonobuoys with lithium batteries. It's kind of scary to see those li-polymer batts burst into flames because they have been touted as 'safe' compared toother designs oflithium batteries. Many of them also advertise having 'overcharge protection circuits,' but now I'm wondering just how effective those are.

 

I'm sure they are very safe ... until they fail. A motorcycle stator is a very noisy and harsh electrical source and even with a lot of regulation, there are damaging spikes and other EM phenomena. I wouldn't trust anything but a military grade charger in an environment like that.

Even with the latest cell-phone technology and their very low current batteries you still hear of problems such as the batteries exploding in people's pockets giving them bad burns. Same with laptops. And those are arguably supplied with ultra-clean charging circuits and not exposed to the elements and harsh environment that a motorcycle is. The price of a component failure is just too high for me. That's just not something I'd ever want to worry about on my bike.

 

Yes, and the reason our reg/rectifier isn't very big is that it relies on our the battery to smooth out a lot of that vice incorporating large capacitors. A lead acid batt can handle that just fine but I'll bet the solid state components of that over charge protection wouldn't..and as soon as they fail, watch out. Could you imagine your battery compartment suddenly busting into flames? []

 

One more notefor those people thinking of going to a purely kick start system. If you're going to be kicking it all the time to getthe bike started,that opens-up another can of worms.The KLX300 hasa problem with a failing idlegear upuntil a certain year when they changed the ACR timing to make it easier to kick, thus putting less pressureon theidle gear.Before they changeddecompression timing, the off- center brass bearing on the idlegearwould become cone shaped with use and the uneven wear would cause the gearto fail, often causing extensive damage to the engine due to metal fragments from the gear becoming lodged in places they weren't supposed to be.

The KLX250S still uses the old exhaust cam part number (old ACR timing) because the idle gear is a non-issue with e-start, so if you are consideringgoing to a full-time kick start set-up, a good way to head-off trouble is by going to a later model KLX300 exhaust cam (expensive route)or send your exhaust cam to a fellow named Brewster at Thumpertalk (inexpensive route). He has done the ACR timing mod to numerous KLX300's. It involves pressing the ACR off of the exhaust cam, then pressing it back on in a slightly different position. The actual procedure is posted at PlanetKLX..but you need the right tools to get'er done.