This Battery Jump-Starts Itself, And These Turn Signals Are Blindingly Bright
Believe 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.
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” lithium-ion 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.
Performance comes at a cost, and Antigravity batteries ring in at a fair bit more than lead-acid options. This particular example is $260, compared to about $130 for a standard replacement, but you’re getting a lot of perks for that price. Antigravity currently offers restart-enabled batteries in eight OEM sizes to fit most bikes, and there are terminals on each corner to provide more orientation options.
Just as lithium-ion chemistry is replacing lead-acid batteries as a lighter, more powerful technology, light-emitting diodes are rapidly replacing old-school incandescent lights.
Rizoma
LEDs produce a brighter, crisper light than incandescent bulbs. LEDs also draw a lot less power than other forms of illumination, and they last hundreds of thousands of hours, which means you’ll likely never need to deal with a burned-out bulb again.
Most V-twins on the market still come with ancient incandescent-bulb turn signals, but you can easily update your bike with sleeker, brighter signals from Rizoma. Whether you want to integrate the signals into the mirrors like we did with these sexy Veloce mirrors ($201 each, plus $20 each for adapters) or just replace your stock turn/stop lights with more compact, brighter units like the Iride S units ($95 each, plus $10 each for adapters) we put on this 883, Rizoma has a huge selection of trick parts for American motorcycles.
Installation is straightforward if you take advantage of Rizoma’s model-specific components, or you can use adapters for universal parts. Since we swapped from incandescent to LED, we needed to wire in the included resistors to keep the flash rate the same, so it helps to be handy with a soldering iron. Other than that, these parts are plug-and-play and totally improve the look of your bike, plus they bring your lighting into the 21st century.
