| So, the summary seems to be:
You can jump start the bike from a standard car battery as long as you follow the jump lead sequence to avoid sparks near the discharged battery.
You shouldn't do any harm to the bike however 'heavy duty' the battery that you're jumping from is, because the battery doesn't pump current into the bike, the bike draws current from it. The bike electrics will only draw the current they need from the jump battery and no more.
BUT...
If you start the engine of the car with the jump battery, then the car alternator (which is made to provide enough power for heated screens, electric windows, wipers etc...) will pump a higher voltage into your reg/rec. The bikes reg/rec will try and dump the excess voltage to ground, but because it's only rated to dump the excess generated by a bikes alternator which is much weaker than a cars alternator, the car alternator will quickly fry the bikes reg/rec
So...for someone like me, with no possibility of getting a car near where I park my bike to jump it from anyway, I could get away with having a heavier duty 'mule' battery around to give my bike a kick...right?  |