HOT BIKE ISSUE #4 2018

Page 88

TECH

B

elieve it or not, when you crank over your engine, your starter motor is using battery technology that hasn’t changed much in more than 150 years. Same goes for your turn signals—the incandescent bulbs in your bike’s signals have been the status quo for over a century. Manufacturers still use this old-school tech because it’s cheap and fairly reliable, but there are products on the market now that use new-age technology that blows the existing stuff out of the water. ANTIGRAVITY LITHIUM-ION BATTERY WITH RESTART FEATURE

Dead batteries are a drag. You’re ready to ride, but all you get when you thumb the starter is a clicking noise from somewhere under your seat. With a regular lead-acid battery, you’ll be looking for a jump-start, but with this new “restart” lithiumion battery from Antigravity, the jump-start is built in. You just need to push the button on the top of the battery, and you’ve got enough juice to get your bike cranking again and get going. This convenient and innovative feature is the result of battery-management circuitry that monitors the cells’ charge and puts the battery to sleep if the voltage drops too much because you left your key on. That means no more dead batteries, or at least a second chance before you have to call for help. Antigravity is the first company to bring this tech to the market, and it’s doing it with new-age lithium-ion chemistry that has some other impressive advantages too. For starters (pun intended), lithium-ion batteries are going to help your bike start easier since they’re better at dumping current than their lazy old lead-acid counterparts. On average, you’re looking at about twice the cold-cranking amps when you switch to lithium-ion, which is awesome if you’re running high-compression pistons or other performance engine mods that make the motor harder to crank over. Weight is another thing that differentiates lithium-ion from lead-acid. As an example, the Antigravity battery we dropped into a 2013 Iron 883 only weighed 3 pounds, compared to 11 pounds for the stock unit.

SOURCE: ANTIGRAVITY BATTERIES shop.antigravitybatteries.com

INNOVATIVE ELECTRONICS

THIS BATTERY JUMP-STARTS ITSELF, AND THESE TURN SIGNALS ARE BLINDINGLY BRIGHT

88 / HOTBIKE.COM


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