On Thu, 29 Mar 2018 08:30:41 -0700 (PDT), Tim
wrote:


On Thu, 29 Mar 2018 04:23:07 -0700 (PDT), Tim
wrote:

On Thursday, March 29, 2018 at 12:59:36 AM UTC-5, wrote:
On Thu, 29 Mar 2018 00:32:34 -0000 (UTC), Bill
wrote:

wrote:
On Wed, 28 Mar 2018 18:30:18 -0000 (UTC), Bill
wrote:

wrote:
On Tue, 27 Mar 2018 17:44:19 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
- show quoted text -
Most of those Triumph choppers were better just parked and looking
pretty than actually being ridden anyway. To that end the capacitor
worked fine as long as you had a fairly easy starting engine. That is
really all it was. I did a couple just using a "D" cell sized
electrolytic I had in my junk box, only assuring it was 15v rated and
polarized right
...

Greg, when I got my 500, it had a “battery eliminator� installed. It started about as good as any other Brit bike. Tickle the left carb, choke, cycle it through a couple times, hit the key and bang! It ran. Problem is you couldn’t start it with the lights on. It drew too much current from the coul.

Get going and at 30 mph, turn on the lights, and it would immediately die, then surge back to life. Riding through town with stoplights and signs was a nightmare.. I hated it. It’s sat since 1985. I’ll start restoring it soon using updated parts. I’m not worried about the Zener diode. I’ll make my own with a real regulator.

Things can be so much better today.

Yeah that Zener was a pretty common point of failure and when it went
bad you boiled the battery. I suspect that might have been the
incentive for some of the capacitor kits.
I used to just keep a spare hanging on the wall of the garage when my
buddies had Triumphs. I never bit on that one. I do understand the
Bonneville 650 was a screamer but I never felt the love.