Atlas Questions

Vince,
My MkII Atlas does not have that black metal 'thing'. It looks home made, and the mudguard has been hacked.
James

Edit: Vince, your black metal think will be related to the battery (it sits directly in front of the mudguard), enabling a larger battery??
 

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Bet that's exactly right. Hope I can move the battery forward and maybe get another plastic guard to replace the hacked one. I remember the battery tray has an odd kind of mount that can be unbolted from the frame. The bigger battery that's fitted was not easy to remove.
 
Quote from a while back.
My battery is way tighter than that pic Andy. It's super close to the air box at the front and a frame rail at the rear and touching the frame at the top. It's stilling on a battery plate that includes a 15mm lip the battery is behind so that needs unbolting and removing. It's crazy tight. I tried removing it today, maybe if I move the exhaust clamp on its mid joint and remove the plate it sits on and covers the bottom edge it MIGHT wiggle out but Its wedged right in there. BTW it got an Italian tune today, I warmed it up after finishing the airbox hole cover and gave it a good flogging, it ran cleanly after a minute or two of hard blipping, apparently no idle jet-blocking effect.
End Quote

I gave up trying to pull the battery back then. It must be capable of being removed but gees it is tight, it is 50mm longer front to back, and 70mm taller than the standard battery. I like having a much bigger and stronger battery but not if it blocks the rear suspension travel by at least 50mm. Maybe I can use this battery in the Pantah and get the correct smaller one for the Atlas. And then It needs the guard to be replaced or patched somehow.
 
I finally pulled that homemade steel cover protecting the very oversized battery at its hacked hole in the rear mudguard today. After failing a quick attempt to remove that battery normally through the side cover a couple of months back I was thinking it might come out through that hacked hole in the rear mudguard, nope it's just big enough to allow the fit of that battery and block 30% of rear suspension travel. I guess they must have used Vaseline to squeeze that huge battery into its spot plus where it hangs out into the rear wheel travel. The bloody annoying thing is the correct-sized replacement battery is $230, an absolute pain in the arse replacing a properly working but just too big battery that now completely compromises the rear suspension, and that doesn't include If it's available shipping a new unhacked rear plastic mudguard from Germany to Oz. Gees bloody DPOs
 
The point after all the info below is can anyone measure the length and width of a standard Atlas Battery box, please?


I finally managed with stupid force to remove the oversized battery. I am flabbergasted that someone managed to fit it into that space, they must have used a Portopower Hydraulic ram and a massive rubber mallet to get it past the airbox and out that huge hacked-out hole in the plastic mudguard. It was hard up against the airbox at the front hard up against the upper frame rail and 50mm hanging out past the rear mudguard. But as usual, there is more, this battery was a tight fit into the battery box, said battery box comes out pretty easy with 2 alan bolts. But I suspect this isn't the original battery box as it also hits the rear tyre and is considerably different to the standard battery dimensions. Standard battery dimensions are
standard 134mm long x 89mm wide x 100mm high
whats fitted 180mm long x 80mm wide x 172mm high
battery box 180mm x 80mm
by these dimensions, even the width of the standard battery won't fit in this battery box. So as I said I suspect this isn't the correct battery box. I can modify it but with that huge hole in the rear guard, that means I cannot get a size to reduce the battery box length to fit till I have a replacement guard. I want to work this so the new battery is as big as will fit when the mudguard is in place without a huge hole in it so nothing impedes the rear wheel travel. Here is a picture of the carnage.
DSCN0533.JPG
 
Vince said:
The point after all the info below is can anyone measure the length and width of a standard Atlas Battery box, please?


I finally managed with stupid force to remove the oversized battery. I am flabbergasted that someone managed to fit it into that space, they must have used a Portopower Hydraulic ram and a massive rubber mallet to get it past the airbox and out that huge hacked-out hole in the plastic mudguard. It was hard up against the airbox at the front hard up against the upper frame rail and 50mm hanging out past the rear mudguard. But as usual, there is more, this battery was a tight fit into the battery box, said battery box comes out pretty easy with 2 alan bolts. But I suspect this isn't the original battery box as it also hits the rear tyre and is considerably different to the standard battery dimensions. Standard battery dimensions are
standard 134mm long x 89mm wide x 100mm high
whats fitted 180mm long x 80mm wide x 172mm high
battery box 180mm x 80mm
by these dimensions, even the width of the standard battery won't fit in this battery box. So as I said I suspect this isn't the correct battery box. I can modify it but with that huge hole in the rear guard, that means I cannot get a size to reduce the battery box length to fit till I have a replacement guard. I want to work this so the new battery is as big as will fit when the mudguard is in place without a huge hole in it so nothing impedes the rear wheel travel. Here is a picture of the carnage.
View attachment 85849
Click to expand...
Vince, Piece of piss!
Pull out ya grinder.
Stich an old poly cutting board onto exist guard.
An afternoons work........Job Done! ;)
 
All this complication could go away if I just fitted the much smaller std size 14Ah battery but where is the fun in that, As nuts as what the DPO has done here there must have been some reason why it was thought of, not enough punch in the smaller sized battery?


The issue is in mm, the rear guard has a bit of a complicated curved shape. It's probably 2mm thick and has a contour in that corner, your cutting board idea would need to be either stitched slightly overlapping the front of the guard reducing battery space or the rear impacting the tyre. I doubt even other dirtbike guards would work, the standard setup is 2 piece mudguard, front and rear bits. My preferred Deca batteries only have 2 sizes around this spec. The standard battery is 14Ah, and the way to big battery is 19Ah. The Deca 19Ah I would like to fit is 30mm shorter, 10mm thicker and 15mm shorter. than the monster fitted now. The area it's going into is so complicated a shape I am going to buy and cut a piece of Poly Styreen the same size as the Deca replacement to check it will fit before buying a $230 battery that might still not fit or impact the rear tyre. BTW those 2 battery box mounting bolts have slotted holes allowing it to move around a bit, this is far from simple as I want the best possible result.
 
I just thought of another reason why this might be happening. This bike is a Series 2 Atlas and they come with a completely different exhaust routing. My bike has the Series 3 exhaust made by Malcom and maybe that causes the battery box to be moved rearward to clear the exhaust. Not sure but that might be true. Hopefully, I can move the battery box up a bit and remake it shorter and a bit wider as well. Every mm counts. Another pain in the arse is I struggled to add shock preload as it's bloody hard to access the shock spring hex nuts and now I need to reduce preload so I can easily bottom the shock to see where the tyre will contact stuff. All I can get is approx 1/8 of a turn at a time.
 
Vince said:
I just thought of another reason why this might be happening. This bike is a Series 2 Atlas and they come with a completely different exhaust routing. My bike has the Series 3 exhaust made by Malcom and maybe that causes the battery box to be moved rearward to clear the exhaust. Not sure but that might be true. Hopefully, I can move the battery box up a bit and remake it shorter and a bit wider as well. Every mm counts. Another pain in the arse is I struggled to add shock preload as it's bloody hard to access the shock spring hex nuts and now I need to reduce preload so I can easily bottom the shock to see where the tyre will contact stuff. All I can get is approx 1/8 of a turn at a time.
Click to expand...
Unbolt the shock.
 
I bought a big sheet of 50mm compressed polystyrene today so I can mock up a replacement battery out of it to check it will fit and not block the rear tyre.
 
After checking with the styreen plug none of the Decas over 14Ah will fit. So I did some deep diving and found a post I had read a good while back written by Nick one of the Poms who owns a bunch of Laverdas including a few Atlass. It's on a blog site not here. It's amazing what you can troll up on Google if you're keen. Anyway, he discovered that you can a fit Standard Harley Sporter Battery and he had a Harley Part Number, so I googled that and it came back as a Harley branded but made by Deca 14Ah battery, insanely expensive with that HD name stuck on it BUT apparently there is an uprated battery the same size made by Motobatt, MBYZ16H, that is rated at 16.5Ah with a Cold Crank rating of 240, that's a fair bit stronger than the 14AH Deca. So I cut the Stynreen plug down to that size and if I extend the outer raised lip on the battery box, pretty easy to do. it's very close to fitting. EXCEPT I cannot be sure till after the butchered rear plastic guard is replaced, it might touch it. It's very close. But it will definitely not interfere with the rear wheel at least and be removable without needing a tow truck to pull on it.
 
I forgot to add the front to the rear length of the battery box has to be reduced by 34mm. I just don't understand why mine is so long, it just cannot be the standard one as it now hangs way past where the rear mudguard was cut out and impedes the rear tyre. But it really doesn't look wrong or modified, just way too long.
 
That's the blog I found. I think THAT carb can be troublesome as well. I hope my fiddling doesn't cause any starting issues. Touch wood mine has been incredibly easy to start with that crazy big battery. I think just a bit less craky than a Zane, less compression and detuned so I hear.
 
Surely you can get a decent CCA from a 14AH battery. I'm running 18Ah AGM SSB (maybe $170) and something like 450CCA on the SFQ and it turns a 10.25:1 880 twin with no drama whatsoever. Have you thought about a LiFePoi? The one i bought that was a dud from being left for 3 years was a 520CCA.
Re the plastic to patch the guard, I repaired the plastic rear bumper on my main law's Subaru by gently heating with a heat gunand it became totally workable and i was able to get it perfectly back into orig shape from a huge concave mess the size of a small footy. From memory I pushed the bubble from the inside against a flat surface using a curved makeshift moulding stick. Dead easy.

You could even source a wrecked guard from a car wrecker and cut bits out and reshape.
 
Vince said:
I just thought of another reason why this might be happening. This bike is a Series 2 Atlas and they come with a completely different exhaust routing. My bike has the Series 3 exhaust made by Malcom and maybe that causes the battery box to be moved rearward to clear the exhaust. Not sure but that might be true. Hopefully, I can move the battery box up a bit and remake it shorter and a bit wider as well. Every mm counts. Another pain in the arse is I struggled to add shock preload as it's bloody hard to access the shock spring hex nuts and now I need to reduce preload so I can easily bottom the shock to see where the tyre will contact stuff. All I can get is approx 1/8 of a turn at a time.
Click to expand...
I didnt need to move the battery when I fitted the Cox exhaust on my other MK2 Vince.
 
There is nothing there to repair, it's a big fist-sized hole. Plus is a compound curve with a very specific contour to boot. Hopefully, Piet can get a replacement, if not then it's plan B. With all those bits removed, I can at least bottom the shock and check how much travel it gets to set sag, confirm chain adjustment is good and see where the tyre gets to when fully compressed.
 
Andy J said:
I didnt need to move the battery when I fitted the Cox exhaust on my other MK2 Vince.
Click to expand...
Good to know Andy, BTW don't freat about my fiddling. No reflection on your ownership of the bike. Just me being Anal, I could have just left it as it was and it would have done 80% of that its made to do and been fine but where is the fun in that. Plus I am learning heaps about Atlass on the way.
 
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