Winterizing - Battery or no battery?

[benjilafouine]

Funny you would mention that. Brings me souvenirs (good and bad)!

I had a battery jacket on a old car before and when it got to 35 below on a January 2nd, it was totally useless, and I mean totally. Car never started because the engine block was to cold. Had to take it inside the garage into our (small) town for the day to get it warmed up. But there was a positive aspect to it: I was scheduled to work that day and instead spent the day with my girlfriend, being 100 miles from my workplace...

This technology was useless but the girlfriend was interesting... As for the car. you will laugh about it but it was a Chevrolet Chevette 1989 !!! Actually the seats were as frozen as the car; they were so cold that I could barely sit on them!! Not that I would want to start my ski at 35 below...

And when you think about it, why trying to protect a $75.00 battery when you know that it will last 2-3 years maximum? My 2011 ATV is getting its third battery before winter, even with a battery tender connected in the winter time. I think they are programmed to fail so that we spend more (planned obsolescence).
Benji.

 

[benjilafouine]

I am bumping this thread because I had a question in an earlier post of this thread that was unanswered: is 145 PSI on both cylinders normal on a 30 hours engine? Should I have expected 150 instead?

Thanks.

Benji.

 

[benjilafouine]

Hi there!

Well, a question has been answered...

I asked if I should leave the battery inside the ski for the winter or not. Last October, I charged the battery all night and then brought it to my local guy to winterize the ski.

He left the battery disconnected in the ski and it spent the winter in 4 feet of snow with 30 below temperatures.

Today, a friend of mine an I had to dig to get the ski out of its pile of snow (yes, 18 inches left, and the frozen and hard kind) with my ATV. It was a beautiful day with temperatures in the low 60s.

Open the seat, there was a bit of oil in the hull (probably from fogging the cylinders), put some dishwasher soap, rinsed it with the water hose (hot water) and once it was all cleaned... couldn't resist to give it a crank...

Plugged back the battery (no charger, no nothing), inserted the DESS and beep beep. Gave it a start and 15 seconds later it was running! Lots of smoke because of the fogging oil but otherwise battery just fine. Let it run for 30 seconds then turned it off. Didn't put the hose in in case some more freezing (but unlikely). Too bad the lake is still frozen. A few more weeks...

But this answers a question: battery can stay in the ski during winter unless you are living in North Pole (and you wouldn't own a sea-doo there anyways...).

Benji.

 

[Dr Honda]

I always leave my batteries in my toys. If it's a toy that drains the battery, I lift the negative wire. (my seadoo) but other's I don't bother. (like most of my motorcycles, and Polaris ski)

My Boat is easy... it has a battery switch, and I turn them off. AND... just today... I pulled the tarp off of it... turned the switch to #1, and started it up. Then I switched it to #2, and started it on that battery. (no issues) I will still give them a nice slow charge to wake them up, after a winter nap.

 

[Coastiejoe]

When I lived in Ohio I removed it. Now that I am in Florida I leave them in and simply remove the wires.

Mostly a mental thing probably,,,,

 

[benjilafouine]

[MENTION=43374]Coastiejoe[/MENTION]. "Mostly a mental thing probably,,,,"

Being in the North (north of Ottawa), it must be mental because my ski started first shot... I was actually very surprised!

Spring has sprung!

Benji

 

[Coastiejoe]

[MENTION=43374]Coastiejoe[/MENTION]. "Mostly a mental thing probably,,,,"

Being in the North (north of Ottawa), it must be mental because my ski started first shot... I was actually very surprised!

Spring has sprung!

Benji

I'm old,,, how I did it when I was young, so did it that way as I aged...

Cold kills things, you know that based on your location. So I have always pulled it. Clearly it is a preference thing more so than a required thing,,,

 

[Sportster-2001-951C-Stock]

I've done it on at least three occasions without knowing it this summer because of all my engine/solenoid troubles. Didn't blow any fuses or MPEM. Maybe I was just lucky! But as I said, it was a mini charger with less than 2 amps.

Benji.

Yes, I'd imagine if the electrolyte was to freeze, the plates might warp and develop a short in one or more cells.

The Seadoo MPEM has an internal and finicky avalanche surge suppression diode inside which can short very easily when a battery charger is performing a saturation charge. Even the very best automatic type of chargers have a strategy to take battery voltage to 14.8 volts and wait for saturation current to drop off. The battery will gas momentarily as this occurs.

When/if the avalanche occurs, the 2A(5A?) fuse is supposed to blow but often the diode is damaged as well, during the event.

This is why we always disconnect the battery while charging, too many MPEMs have been damaged by connecting external power supplies and many have learned the hard way.

Here's the datasheet for the internal diode, as you can see it's not supposed to trigger and should be capable of more current (100A) than the MPEM fuse but alas.... the engineering was sound but the execution stinks.

http://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/view/59746/EIC/MR2535.html

 

[Sportster-2001-951C-Stock]

I am bumping this thread because I had a question in an earlier post of this thread that was unanswered: is 145 PSI on both cylinders normal on a 30 hours engine? Should I have expected 150 instead?

Thanks.

Benji.

I would be happy with 145psi. The bone stock factory motors would blow 150psi just after break-in but it's been mentioned many times the reman motors tend to blow 145. I think the factory may have used a thinner cylinder base gasket than most builders use.

150psi is less conservative from a detonation point of view, motor re-builders are building a motor later on with the wisdom of experience and 145psi is not quite as susceptible to detonation. Thus, it's probably better unless maybe you need another 50RPM and PROMISE to always use high test fresh fuel.....

There is one caveat though, if the squish gap (quench) is too large this can promote detonation. So if you really want to check the work, you can measure your squish gap using some soft lead solder wire. I would measure at either end of the wrist pin as close as possible.

And don't ask me what the measurement should be, maybe it's in the manual but I think they actually spec volume in some cases, not actual squish.

 

[benjilafouine]

Well. Some answers after six months!!! Cool. Thanks.

I may put a 1 amp charger on my ski for a few hours before putting it in the water just in case and because I started it two times for less than 30 seconds after six long cold months. I was amazed at this 3-year old battery not even needing a charge after all this coldness.

But it all makes sense: at 30 below, battery is not worse if you do not try to crank it. ATVs are different because you use them in winter at 30 below (around here I do to carry stove wood). At 30 below, it is really hard on a battery to provide a charge and they can be drained withinin a minute. In fact, my ATV won't start at 10 below as battery doesn't have enough power left to start (need a tender). Not even enough to crank the engine. But wait for the afternoon at 0 degrees F and it will start. It was not dead, just numb... It is the same thing with automobiles.

Benji.

 

[benjilafouine]

[MENTION=65307]Sportster-2001-951C-Stock[/MENTION]

You lost me with that quench thing... You meant drinking white wine?



Benji

 

[Sportster-2001-951C-Stock]

Necessity as you know, has always been the mother of invention. Squish, or quench more accurately, refers to the effort during world war 1 I believe, to discover a way to use poor quality fuels in the military tanks and vehicles. Short story long, they discovered if they placed a ring around the outer edge of the combustion chamber to form a dome shaped chamber they could burn their low quality fuel without detonation and damage to pistons, etc., allowing them to use a leaner mixture and perhaps more ignition advance.

Suffice it to say, this relates to how closely the piston fits into the cylinder head around the edges of the cylinder. Turns out compression isn't the only parameter but you probably know cylinder shape and of course ignition timing along with air:fuel ratio all are responsible for a controlled burning of the fuel charge. By definition (perhaps my definition, lol) detonation occurs when the fuel stops burning prematurely. Maybe the fuel charge is too thin for a controlled burn or the chamber shape is poorly designed and the fuel charge ignition results in more of an abrupt pressure peak such as caused by an explosion(detonation) as opposed to controlled expansion the pressurized gasses burning in the charge.

So they found if they installed a ring on the head or piston around the circumference and placed a dome in the center the charge of gasses was kept more uniform and they could make more power using lower grade fuel, etc.

We commonly take for granted all the engineering and distill this concept (for our purposes) to measuring squish, which is the distance from the edge of the piston crown to the cylinder head. Best place to get an accurate measurement is at each end of the wrist pin b/c the piston will cock sideways slightly dur to piston to bore clearance at the 90 degree position from the wrist pin.

But I don't know what your squish should be but to measure it you'd insert a piece of soft lead wire through the cylinder spark plug hole and hold it against the cylinder wall while rotating the engine through TDC position. This will "squish" slightly the soft lead wire flat (assuming the appropriate diameter of wire is used) during interference at TDC.

Thus you measure the thickness of the squished wire to derive the squish value. Some engine manufacturers specify squish and racers play with this value by exchanging various thickness cylinder base gaskets, a thinner cylinder base gasket results in more squish of the wire (and increases compression). Other manufacturers specify chamber volume.

The distance must be within a range for best results, if too little the compression might be too high for factory spec ignition timing and carburetion. Worst case, there won't be enough space remaining when the engine reaches operating temperature or overheats slightly or is over revved and the piston might contact the cylinder head. If the gap is too large, detonation might occur due to a mis-shaped chamber heated dilute gases around the perimeter might cause detonation.

I'd bet your builder did a fine job, this is why I prefer to let an experienced engine builder do the machining and assembly.

 

[benjilafouine]

Wow! You know your stuff man!

Your explanation just sounded (to me) like when I am trying to explain to a customer that he needs a dual CPU server for better virtualization with 64 GB RAM, redundant PSUs and redundant SAS hot-swappable HDDs at 15k RPM (or the new SSDs) to form a RAID 10 Array (and even maybe even a set of RAID 10 arrays if not a SAN) and that he should purchase two of them, then place them in two separate buildings linked together by a VPN tunnel and do failover redundancy with a latency of a maximum of 30 minutes at 1000 mbps connected through fiber while taking snapshots every 10 minutes in case something goes wrong during these 10 minutes (so you can go back in time by increments) and ultimately build a second VPN tunnel to the Microsoft Azure portal to have his failover server in the Cloud and accessible from all around the planet and being billed for only the CPU power he is using!!!!

And yes, what I wrote also exists!!!!!



Benji.

 

[Sportster-2001-951C-Stock]

Yes so you must know if inter-symbol interference caused by, or a result of, envelope delay distortion?

Anyway, Gordon Jennings (an expert gearhead), described in his 2-stroke tuners handbook, Harry Ricardo's contribution. Turns out this was in the latter throws of WW1 from what I can tell. Mr. Jennings' piece is well worth a read if you want to discover some of the finer points of what's going on in a 2-stroke engine.

http://edj.net/2stroke/jennings/2stroketunershandbook.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Ricardo