Battery Eliminators

Battery eliminators are large capacitors that were - in those glorious days - used to smooth out headlight flicker on magneto equipped road bikes. Instead of the then not available small lead-acid batteries they were hooked to the regulator battery terminal. The - then mechanical - regulator was adjusted to a convenient voltage for the light bulbs.

Nowadays solid state (electronical) regulators are much more common than mechanical ones. But even the ones that are designed to work with small batteries still need a load capacitor when run on magneto equipped batteries and supposed to feed the lighting equipment only. For generator applications 5,100 uF (read: micro-Farad) are ok, for alternator applications 18,000 uF are recommended by Cycle Electric. Of course, if needed, capacitors can be added. They must be connected in parallel to add capacitance values.