Did I fry my Compufire?

[posplayr]

Ok, no smoked B/W wires - there are 2 of them that go to the negative terminal, along w/ the large (8 or 10 gage) ground wire to the trans. No smoked wires anywhere - took the battery box & CF out and had a thorough look. Did the Stator Paper Quick Test (no headlight) and got 12.8V w/ key off, 12.13V w/ key on for 10 seconds, 14.4V at 1,500 rpm, 14.36V at 2,500 rpm, 14.36V again at 5,000 rpm, and 13.25V w/ key off.
The transmission ground looks like a good place to for me to run a 10 gage ground wire from one of the CF mounting bolts. So, I'll now have this new ground as well as the other ground from the CF to the battery neg. Will this now have sufficient grounding? The way the CF is mounted to the battery box, there's not a whole lot of surface area between the 2 surfaces. I'd prefer to leave it this way unless it's really necessary.

Well somehing smoked, when wires get hot they will cause bumps in the wire insulation even if it did not melt off. The wire will also get brittle. If you see no vidence then I guess you are OK as you did not leave it on long enough to really smoke.

Where is your single point ground? At the battery (-)?

Grounding always seems to bring up controversy ; Here are 4 different options for doing a single point ground. The R/R(-) if kept reasonably short (less than 12") then I would say there is no reason to go larger than 14 awg with a quality wire. The other ground wires can be 16 awg. Nothing should be over 18" and most only 12" or less. FYI the harness B/W looks to be 18 awg and it is at least 24" from ring lug to ring lug.

[seano]

Posplayer, could you please define "single point" ground for me? What is the single point? Not trying to be a pain, but I'm electrically challenged. Thanks

[posplayr]

Posplayer, could you please define "single point" ground for me? What is the single point? Not trying to be a pain, but I'm electrically challenged. Thanks

I don't think a definition will help. The easiest way is to accurately describe what to do is to connect all grounds as close to the r/r - as practical. Why is this minimizes current sharing which in this case proves your charging and reduces your sensitivity to connection corrosion between the battery and r/r. I have posted variously on power and grounding.

See gs charging health in my signature.


If you pick one of the 4 options you will be ok.

[posplayr]

Posplayer, could you please define "single point" ground for me? What is the single point? Not trying to be a pain, but I'm electrically challenged. Thanks

I don't think a definition will help. The easiest was to accurately describe what to do is to connect all grounds as close to the r/r - as practical. Why is this minimizes current sharing and improves you charging. I have posted variously on power and grounding.

See gs charging health in my signature.

[seano]

Thanks I'm making some progress w/ all of this info. Just need to read it a few times slowly, maybe even sleep on it, and eventually the lightbulb will go off (pun intended).

[posplayr]

Thanks I'm making some progress w/ all of this info. Just need to read it a few times slowly, maybe even sleep on it, and eventually the lightbulb will go off (pun intended).

Well yes I understand that intuitively you would think that the R/R should be connected directly to the battery (both + and -). And that would be OK if there was no charging going on as then the battery would be the only source of power and all power would return back to the battery.

But when the bike is running and charging all the current doesn't return to the battery any more it returns back to it's source which is now the R/R. And so the R/R(-) is where the the single point ground needs to be attached.

The main benefit of this is so that the if implemented in one of the fashions described, the wire running from Battery(-) to SPG only carries the battery charging current (only about 3-4 amps) instead of R/R current which is closer to 15 amps.

This raises the charging voltage as measured at the battery because there will be less voltage drop due to contact corrosion.