Britbike forum Forums British motorcycles in general Bsa gold star forum 1962 Catalina

Well, I've certainly seen that before but I had more of this in mind.

Having read fifteen-years' worth of 'Goldie' magazines over the past few days, joined the Gold Star Club, and written an article about my Gold Stars for some future issue of 'Goldie', it was inevitable that I would want to ride a Gold Star. Because of our ongoing house remodeling, riding any motorcycle over the past four months has been nearly impossible. Even if I didn't need to be on-call for questions that come up frequently, I do not want to open the garage doors while workers are here. That leaves the weekends, but somehow they always get eaten up taking care of things I'd normally have done during the week. Anyway, today was the day that would come to an end. But first…

I installed total-loss lighting in all three Gold Stars based on LED bulbs and NiMH battery packs. However, the one in the Catalina has been showing its age. My notes show I installed it 6½ years ago, and it appears a lifetime of 3–5 years is to be expected. Although they self-discharge at a rate of ~30%/month, I top up all my batteries monthly so, at worst, the current pack should be down by no more than 30% today. Despite that, the headlight didn't generate a single photon. Counting monthly charging as a charging cycle, the 500 cycles expected for a battery of the size I use would be 40 years, so it is shelf life, not discharge cycles, that killed mine. Anyway, all it takes is removing two bolts from the seat and cutting two zip ties to access the battery pack.



I last charged this battery pack sometime in January (I only keep track of the month on my chart, not the day), but my battery tester registered 0% remaining capacity for five of them, and just 10% for the sixth.



I should note that I attached V/I meters to the chargers I use so I know that the battery packs are getting the correct voltage and that current is actually flowing.



I took the above photograph when it had been attached to the new battery pack for a few hours, having slowly dropped from an initial ~0.35 A.

Although the batteries I removed had 5000 mAh capacity, I replaced them with ones having 4000 mAh.



This means that, unlike the 9 hours of the old battery pack, the new, 20% less capacity, battery pack "only" would allow riding with the low beam for 7¼ hours before having to recharge it. However, I never ride for a solid 7 hours during the day, let alone do any riding at night, and typically I don't have my lights on anyway during the day, so the new battery pack should be fine.

I didn't keep track of time, but installing the new batteries couldn't have taken much more than 15 minutes, at which point the Catalina was ready to ride. But, the Ariel sitting next to it had caught my eye…

[to be continued elsewhere]

The Catalina's new battery pack still operates the light the day after I installed it, and presumably has its full capacity (7¼ hrs. low beam; 5¼ hrs. high), so I didn't test it. However, I did test the pack in the Special Competition, and the two portable packs I have for the Ariel and BB Gold Star.

The Special Competition was the first one I wired with an LED/NiMH total loss system, and I used 5 D-cells rather than my later use of 6 C-cells. Thus, it has lower voltage but double the stored energy. Anyway, although the Catalina's pack had died of old age, today the one in the Special Competition kept the high beam (and taillight) on for 3½-hours before dropping back to only the low beam. That is only ~30% of what it was capable of when new so I'll be having to replace it before too long.

The present portable C-cell packs use 20% larger-capacity batteries than the ones I just installed in the Catalina. Also, they are about a year newer than the pack in the Special Competition. Both kept the high beams on in the Ariel and BB for 3½ hours before I ended the test, which means they have at least 50% their original capacity. NiMH batteries can suffer permanent damage if the voltage is allowed to drop too much, which is why I ended the test when I did (I wasn't working in the garage so only checked on them periodically).

MMan, you make a very persuasive case for total loss, rechargeable battery packs. But I do wonder why you wouldn't run with lights on during the day. Are you preserving the batteries for some reason?

I assume you forgot to end "would" with "n't," n'est pas? I have no excuse, other than a habit I established decades ago. Also, if I have the light on during the day, that's less time I could have it on during the night, when I don't ride anyway…

Leaving aside the fact that there is zero cost to having the light on, so even if the reduction in chances for an accident were only 0.1%, it still would be worth doing. However, the studies I've read leave me wondering if the authors' had taken into account all relevant factors. Constant-on lights have been on bikes for at least 25 years, so anyone who doesn't have a light on today either has an old bike, or has deliberately disabled the light. So, studies of accident rates will be skewed by at least those two relevant factors, neither of which I've seen mentioned. Also, the wide variation in reported results, between 5% reduction and 41%, is another reason I wonder about the methodology of at least some of the studies.

No matter what the actual figure might be, it seems reasonable that a headlight would increase visibility so it should reduce the chances of accident by some amount. So, I should try to change my old habit.

The engineer I acquired my Laverda Jota from in the 80's had jimmied a modulator into the headlight circuit so you got a high frequency pulsing effect.
Of course, he had to be tracked by police aircraft once since the Interceptors couldn't keep up, so visibility to other traffic was important.
I kept the modulator installed.

How many near-misses have you had due to epileptic seizures that your light has caused in oncoming drivers? Or, is there enough time delay between onset of the seizure and the car swerving that the accident always occurs behind you?

As an addendum to the total-loss battery story, the next figure shows how the remaining capacity of NiMH batteries depends on voltage.



If I plug the the battery charger shown in a recent post into the battery pack before I plug it into the wall socket, its 0.1 V resolution is sufficient to give a reasonable idea of the state of charge at that point.

The latter.

I've often pondered the pros and cons of riding with the headlight on during daylight hours and one story I was told ages ago was that its related to experiments with shipping and aircraft in WW2.

Apparently, a form of active camouflage was discovered which used lights to help blend the outline of ships and aircraft into the overall background. In the aircraft application this was experimented with, apparently with some success and was known as Yehudi lights.

Exactly how Yehudi lights would help or hinder motorcycling is unknown to me but its a true story see This Link

The only close call I had on the Cannonball was when a woman pulled out halfway across the road, saw me, blocked my lane by stopping, and mouthed the words "I'm sorry." I already had grabbed the brakes as soon as she started pulling out, so it actually wasn't even a close call. There's no way to know whether she would have seen me and not pulled out if I'd had my headlight on but, at the risk of jinxing myself in the future, what saved me was paying attention to the road ahead and always expecting people to turn in front of me, ignore stop signs on side streets, etc.

I said in a previous post that whether or not a headlight in the daytime actually lowers the risk of an accident, it can't hurt. But, in, ahem, light of gunner's post, maybe there are times when a headlight can make the visibility worse.

Oregon vehicle laws:


To be street legal, a motorcycle or moped must have: A white headlight, illuminated at all times. Motorcycles must have at least one, but not more than three, white headlights. Modulating headlights are allowed during daylight hours.



Bill B...

It's not just epilectics. Flicker vertigo can happen to anyone and cause symptoms similar to an epileptic seizure.

From Wikipedia:
Flicker vertigo, sometimes called the Bucha effect, is "an imbalance in brain-cell activity caused by exposure to low-frequency flickering (or flashing) of a relatively bright light."[1] It is a disorientation-, vertigo-, and nausea-inducing effect of a strobe light flashing at 1 Hz to 20 Hz, approximately the frequency of human brainwaves.[2][3] The effects are similar to seizures caused by epilepsy (in particular photosensitive epilepsy), but are not restricted to people with histories of epilepsy.

I experienced this once at low altitude on a night flight doing touch and go's to maintain currency. I momentarily fixating on two nearby helicopter strobe lights, also departing, to determine it they were a collision threat and almost immediately felt dizzy and disoriented, until I looked away and re-focused on the city lights roughly in the direction I was departing from. Very unnerving.

Hugh Jörgen, taking a leisurely Sunday ride on his Laverda, oblivious to the trail of destruction left in his wake.

We in NSW used to run "lights on for Road Safety " campaigns every long weekend with a lot of advertising to support it.
It worked so lights on became perminant
Without the advertising campaign, the collision rates reverted to their original level as far as you can draw a base line for collisions.
So it remained in for motorcycles for a short time then was abandoned after it was used to overturn a "not guilty" verdict for a collision between a well heeled Eastern Subburbs motorist & motorcyclist .
The simple fact is eyes see a lot more than is relayed to the brain.
One of the problems some autistic people have is everything their eyes see is sent to the brain & they suffer from visual overload .
Got a medical name that I can not recall at the moment .
Motorcyclists, other than police & bikies are not percieved as a danger to car drivers so they don't see you, or pushbike riders for the same reason.

This was proven to me at a Motor Club Show decades ago where one of the motorcyclist groups got hold of a video from the USA
So you had a windscreen view complete with an internal rear view mirror & 2 wing mirrors
I forget how long the video ran for now days but it was fairly long say 3 to 5 minutes.
After the video you got asked a series of questions.
Almost no one saw the suit wearing commuter on a small bike despite the fact that he was in all 3 mirrors for about 1/3 of the time.
Everyone saw both the bikie & cop despite the fact that they only appeared in one of the wing mirrors changing lane several vehicles behind for a brief fraction of a second.

From that day on it changed the way I looked at the road behind as I missed the commuter the first time a well but did see both the bikie & the cop on a bike & the cop in a marked car .

I tend to think that people noticed bikes with their lights on during the day more because it was unusual. Same thing with the third brake light on cars. Now that it is the norm, there are so many lights on, particularly in congested areas, that I, for one, find it harder to see, especially at night. Add a little rain or snow and its worse. I see much better at night on backroads with little traffic or light pollution. I also find a number of folks noticing me during the day because my lights are not on. They think its strange and ask.

Ed from NJ

I get Eds point above. Many years ago someone actually stopped to advise me that I had left my headlight on during the daytime, as I have always ridden with my headlights on since I started road riding in 1981.

I had my dynamo converted to 12v and rebuilt by Sean Hawker. I've used a Dave Lindsley JG regulator without issue in the bike for 20 years (my father had this bike before me whilst I was tearing around on Triumphs).

Given that most of us have developed that 6 sense regarding other road users random behaviour by now and I know that although I ride briskly I am much more circumspect nowadays about overtaking opportunities and the like than I was in my youth (probably why my wife is very much against my son riding motorcycles on the road).

They'll see the COP for certain.
Thirty years ago, our county sheriff equipped two of his deputies with Harley-Davidson police bikes and put them out on the roads from May to October.

They wrote many citations to drivers who pulled out of side streets in front of them.
It proved that car drivers just don't see (or respect) motorcyclists.

For a few years after that, motorcycle vs. car accident rates dropped in this area.

Getting way off topic but
many decades ago I was part of a group who was trying to change the way drivers licences ( to be renamed permits so they are considered a privilage not a right ) were issued .
Not to go into detils but basically you had to start on a pushbike & work your way through several stages till eventually you wer allowed to drive a car / truck/ 4WD.
One of the proposed benefits worked out by some brain geeks was because every one would have to have been on 2 wheels the latter drivers could understand the head pace of cyclists
On top of that because all of your kids, friends, relations could be on that cycle / motorcycle collisionrates would drop because you had skin in the game so would make yourself more aware .
It never got anywhere of course.
I am good at putting massive efforts into wasted causes .

No more from me on this topic so back to scheduled programming .

In my home state, driving is considered a privilege.

You have the RIGHT to travel anywhere you want, but you can't operate a motor vehicle to get there without a drivers' license.

Having workers at the house five days a week for the past six months has put a real crimp on my garage work and motorcycle riding. At least one of us needs to be in the house to answer questions about the remodeling that come up frequently, I don't want to open the garage doors and wheel bikes out while workers are here, and somehow weekends disappear in taking care of things we couldn't do during the week.

Anyway, I needed to be sure the Catalina and BB were ready for an upcoming ride, so this afternoon I took care of routine maintenance on the Catalina, then tried to start it prior to taking it on a short ride tomorrow. It started on the second kick. It would have started on the first kick had I glanced at my notes on what it wanted in terms of retard, choke and tickling. Forget what it might say on Hallmark greeting cards, riding motorcycles having magnetos and properly jetted carburetors are the true secrets to happiness.

Normally I have my helmet on when I start a motorcycle, but I didn't when I started the Catalina. Jeez, is its silencer useless.



Tomorrow I'll idle my way down the hill past the neighbors and treat the throttle very gently until I get far enough away that they can't hear it. Five miles might be far enough…

Funny, your Catalina didn't seem loud when I last rode it.

"What?"

I SAID YOUR CATALINA DIDN'T SEEM LOUD WHEN I LAST RODE IT.

Even long-time Harley riders can hear it.

Today, the Catalina started on the first kick and I took it on a 7-mile loop during which the bike performed flawlessly. I don't understand the physical mechanism, but wearing a helmet caused the bike to generate much less noise than yesterday, so it couldn't possibly have annoyed the neighbors. To the best I could hold the speedometer at exactly 50 mph the GPs said I was traveling at 49.something mph, which counts as perfect agreement.

I'm sure I mentioned in a much earlier post that, after our 1000-mile ride across Texas in 2017, I changed the engine and gearbox sprockets to give it the 39%-higher Clubman overall gearing, and changed its SCT gearbox for an ASCT. The latter has a much lower 1st than the SCT but the same ratios for the rest. This combination of gearbox and gearing seems perfect for riding in this part of the country.