Monday, December 5, 2011

An ounce of prevention

Putting my Vespa up for its annual hibernation is a breeze this year, thanks to the Modern Vespa forum.

Last year I removed the battery and brought it into the house to put it on the battery tender. That's a chore.

As part of last year's winter projects I upgraded the ground line from the battery that powers my Stebel horn and accessory outlet in the glove box.

Once I had the bike all opened up, I also followed the excellent advice from forum member Danny*h, and added a separate 10 amp fused positive and negative line direct from the battery. That new line terminates in a 2 pin trailer plug that hangs just a tad below the left cowl.

I soldered a matching 2 pin plug onto my portable air compressor that I keep in the pet carrier. Now I can pump up my tires to fix a flat without worries of blowing the fuse for the horn or power outlet.

On Sunday I cut the alligator clamps off my battery tender and soldered on another 2 pin plug.

This year all I needed to do was plug the battery tender into the bike. No battery removal.

That left me with one remaining 2 pin plug but with the wrong (female) polarity.  I added a couple of yellow butt crimp connectors to the leads from that plug, then"reversed" the polarity by putting red heat shrink tubing on the black lead, and black heat shrink tubing on the red lead.

Presto! Now I have a test point directly to the battery. All I need to do to check on the battery is plug in my test lead and plug the leads from my multimeter into the open ends of the butt connectors.  That test lead will make it a snap to monitor battery condition once the heated grips are up and running.

Not trusting my technical writing skills, I have added 5,000 words worth of pictures below.

You will note that the Vespa LX parcel hook makes a perfect place to hang my Motomaster battery tender:
Multimeter connected to the test lead:
Close up of the 2 pin plug / test lead:
Battery tender connected to the Vespa:

3 comments:

len@RE-GLAZE-IT said...

david.......it sounds and looks very much like your organised and ready for the dark months ahead!

regards

len

Keith - Circle Blue said...

Good night moon . . . Good night Vespa.

Saw a LX50 parked on the sidewalk next to a local cafe. It was red and I admit I thought of you.

Unknown said...

David:

I can't believe it. We are in Parallel worlds. First the eggs benedicts, the poaching of the eggs and now the air compressor. I also cut the leads on my compressor and soldered on an SAE-2PIN connector, and I use the same one for my battery tender so I don't have to remove the battery either.

what else have you going on over there ? I am also very anal to make sure everything goes back into their proper place and I keep all packing and instructions. I still have the cellophane on the Flat Screen we bought last year. I also keep spares of everything, just in case . . .

bob
Riding the Wet Coast

The copyright in all text and photographs, except as noted, belongs to David Masse.