I bought an Odyssey pc680 and I want to move it to sit under the gearbox and behind the oil sump. i bought an aluminium tray from ebay, and made up some brackets to weld to the frame. A local welder laughed at me, when he was done scolding me for 'making a pig of a beautiful old classic bike like that'. I told him it's only beautiful because of the countless hours I have spent with a toothbrush and degreaser, and all of the expensive miller oil I have put through it. he wasn't having any of it and will not weld anything to the precious (only 6 billion of them made) R80. Anyway, when I calmed down I thought the old fart might have a point, even though his bedside manner leaves something to be desired! I still want to relocate the battery, but without welding. I tried the exhaust clamp (the one that joins the headers to the silencer) but the diameter is too large and it won't clamp tight. Has anyone tried this and what did you use? it would be handy to find something like an exhaust clamp of the right diameter (I must actually measure it) to for without getting the angle grinder out.
Instead of going to all the trouble to move the battery to lower your center of mass, why not just get one of the new lithium batteries that weighs 2 lbs instead of 15? It'd probably be cheaper and easier, plus your battery won't be in a location where the contacts will get continuously blasted with water and road grime coming off your wheels, gear oil leaking out your neutral switch, and any motor oil coming out your cylinder bases, pushrod seals, oil pan gasket, etc, plus getting cooked by your exhaust collector box. The factory put the battery where they did because it's a fairly well protected location.
Didn't anyone learn from Honda's GP effort decades ago? Honda and the rest of the manufacturers did! Unless your bike has a hack on it, you don't want to lower your CG. You want to centralize it. Centralize to what? The bike's pitch axis. Bike are not cars. They have to lean in order to turn. Leaning has a pitch axis. With rider on board, the pitch axis is probably closer to the battery's stock placement than it is underneath the tranny! With that in mind, there is room to play with wheel weight bias but that should all be kept as close to the pitch axis as possible. Decades old hands on gospel that everybody should know.
I might be wrong in this case, but 90% of the battery relocations I've seen were done for purely aesthetic reasons. It's the exhaust-wrap trend.
I do not know what size your battery is but I make a kit that comes complete with mounting hardware. Here is a link to more pictures. http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.357300210982474.79313.237920049587158&type=3 My kit is made for a 12V20P Westco /5 or R65 battery prototype mounted
Purely aesthetic I'm not ashamed to say. I added the older alu airbox covers and I want to be able to see them from the rear of the bike. At 86kg and 6'2" I can't imagine moving the battery a few inches will make much difference to my CoG? Hope I'm not offending anybody's sensibilities!
I'm not but I hope you realize that being taller just RAISES your pitch axis which would make lowering your battery even more detrimental (to what actually works).
It's good info, I like learning this stuff. I used to own a proper race bike, the R80 is not it. I'm happy to modify the life out of it to get it looking how I like it, the concession I'm making to the purist in me is to make non-destructive modifications. After that, anything goes. Purists proper: just be grateful I don't own a welder or I couldn't hold myself back >:)
I try my best to stick with mods that can be undone as well. I know he didn't say that specifically AL but a lot of people have the wrong idea about motorcycle CG. It sounds like Kunst did. I am just saying in case anyone cares but it does seem like most cafers and scramblers don't care what works. They just want a look. Personally, that mentality is what I don't like about choppers. They don't DO anything well so they don't look good to me. IMO BMW was all about function over form until the R12C came out. I am all for 'modifying' but don't care for 'customizing'. The former is about form and function. The latter just form. IMO good function IS form!
I'm with form after function myself, but if I wanted a well handling bike I wouldn't have sold my race bike. I don't believe the most highly modified R80 possible would have a patch on a modern bike, so why modify it? It can't be purely function. Maybe nostalgia? Maybe just the challenge? Not pure function though
That sounds real close to a 'if it isn't the fastest thing out there then it is junk' mentality. I remember a owner of a multi-brand dealership called my airhead junk (we knew each other). I said maybe so but so are all of your brands' last year's models. Why modify it? To make it work better. Nostalgia? The only bikes I know of being customized back then were choppers. Even bobbers started out bobbing for performance. A challenge? Making it work better is a challenge. Making it work better and look good at the same time is a challenge. Making it 'look' better with little regard for function? I don't call that much of a challenge. From looking around I would say it is all too easy! But to each their own and good luck! It just seems like my way of looking at it is getting rarer so I thought it was worth discussing. Not too many others are from what I read here.
Those brackets look err, err , substantial. Surely you could attach that tray to the frame with some of those rubber coated loop brackets like BMWeuro has in his photo?
I wouldn't use those bendy flexy thin brackets to hold MY battery in place hanging down on the frame, but sure it would work on someone else's just fine Also that location just "looks" all wrong, move it from a nice hidden location to hang down like balls connected to a trailer hitch on a blelching obnoxiously loud diesel truck. Makes about the same sense to me......but that's me and my opinion which probably means very little anyway. The lightweight battery makes the most sense.
As previously stated, I don't care for that location. Longer battery cables? Right where the thing will catch all kinds of everything? Talk about keeping your battery posts clean? And, of course, my objections mentioned earlier. But still . . . those adell clamps are loaded in tension. Tension doesn't cause bendy/flexy. The mount looks like it will work to me. It's just the rest of it that I don't think is a good idea. Like I have said earlier, IF I changed the battery location I would probably move it to above/in front of the left cylinder. Close to the pitch axis. Forward weight bias. Left side to balance our bikes heavier right side. Easy to get to and maintain in a clean spot. Shorter cables! That all works IMO.
