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The charging curse strikes .... again

Grimly

Grimly

Forum Sage
Super Site Supporter
Past Site Supporter
Hellfire, another dead stator by the looks of it.
Just pulled into the garage today and noticed the headlight wasn't brightening when revs went up. A quick prod with the DVM showed 11.78V.
Oh well, diagnosis tomorrow. Luckily, I've just readied a stator for the other bike but not fitted it yet, so if needed, that will go straight on.
I'm now thinking it's time to cut my losses with this crappy system and renew with a brand new stator, SH-775 r/r and start afresh. If there was a way of hooking a car alternator up to the engine I'd have done it years ago, but the only method I've seen (might have been on a Honda) involved a pulley on the crank end where the pickups are; it looked shonky as hell, and certainly would have led to crankshaft damage in the event of an off.
 
Grimly said:
Hellfire, another dead stator by the looks of it.
Just pulled into the garage today and noticed the headlight wasn't brightening when revs went up. A quick prod with the DVM showed 11.78V.
Oh well, diagnosis tomorrow. Luckily, I've just readied a stator for the other bike but not fitted it yet, so if needed, that will go straight on.
I'm now thinking it's time to cut my losses with this crappy system and renew with a brand new stator, SH-775 r/r and start afresh. If there was a way of hooking a car alternator up to the engine I'd have done it years ago, but the only method I've seen (might have been on a Honda) involved a pulley on the crank end where the pickups are; it looked shonky as hell, and certainly would have led to crankshaft damage in the event of an off.
Click to expand...

New stator, new series RR, clean and replace any bad connections bout the only way to go to start afresh. Best test the battery too.
 
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Grimly said:
Hellfire, another dead stator by the looks of it.
Just pulled into the garage today and noticed the headlight wasn't brightening when revs went up. A quick prod with the DVM showed 11.78V.
Oh well, diagnosis tomorrow. Luckily, I've just readied a stator for the other bike but not fitted it yet, so if needed, that will go straight on.
I'm now thinking it's time to cut my losses with this crappy system and renew with a brand new stator, SH-775 r/r and start afresh. If there was a way of hooking a car alternator up to the engine I'd have done it years ago, but the only method I've seen (might have been on a Honda) involved a pulley on the crank end where the pickups are; it looked shonky as hell, and certainly would have led to crankshaft damage in the event of an off.
Click to expand...

if you would just do as you just described, your would have increased the power efficiency beyond an alternator and much lower cost and weight.
 
posplayr said:
if you would just do as you just described, your would have increased the power efficiency beyond an alternator and much lower cost and weight.
Click to expand...
Yes, but if there was an accessible PTO point it would have been a simple matter to do and an easy replacement in the event of failure. Some bike engines lend themselves to this type of mod quite easily, others (ours) don't. As for size and weight; even 30 years ago, the smaller car alternators were pretty small and the Ducillier alternator as fitted to the smaller Citroens was a favourite for bikes. Weight - not much of a problem on a machine that already weighs as much as two musclemen, really.
The recent/current crop of self-contained bike alternators also look quite promising for remote mounting, too, being even smaller then the aformentioned French unit.
 
Grimly said:
Yes, but if there was an accessible PTO point it would have been a simple matter to do and an easy replacement in the event of failure. Some bike engines lend themselves to this type of mod quite easily, others (ours) don't. As for size and weight; even 30 years ago, the smaller car alternators were pretty small and the Ducillier alternator as fitted to the smaller Citroens was a favourite for bikes. Weight - not much of a problem on a machine that already weighs as much as two musclemen, really.
The recent/current crop of self-contained bike alternators also look quite promising for remote mounting, too, being even smaller then the aformentioned French unit.
Click to expand...

I think you are making my point for me, there is little to be gained from an field controlled alternator over a PM alternator. The only thing the FCA has over the PMA is reliability when you use a Shunt R/R. The Shunt PM has a very poor reliability, once you move to Series R/R there is no benefit in reliability any more (FCA over PMA). In addition you will be hard pressed to find anything that is better in an field controlled alternator than a PM alternator with Series control (perhaps less switching noise).

So there is really no point to a feild controlled alternator, unless it is ground clearance. The PMA is still on the end of the crank and it limits cornering clearance.
 
We don't know the long-term reliability of the SH-775, yet.
I sincerely hope it turns out to be better, but if it's not as good as it's cracked up to be I will be modifying something to take a pulley.
The SH-775 is nothing more than the flavour of the month.
 
It took Shindengen a long time to offer the series SH-775- my guess is they spent a long time fiddling with this gizmo, before offering it. They made gizziloins of the shunt style R/R's, so they are quite aware of potential problems on a PM charging system. I'm more worried about the quality of stator manufacturing these days- lots of corners can be cut in the race to be the cheapest.

Get a new stator, and a Sh-775; consider mounting a onboard voltmeter to keep you informed about your charging system's status- usually there are warning signs ahead of complete failure.
 
tom203 said:
Get a new stator, and a Sh-775; consider mounting a onboard voltmeter to keep you informed about your charging system's status- usually there are warning signs ahead of complete failure.
Click to expand...

Anyone has any recommendations for a brand of voltmeter. I found a nice little LCD one very cheap from China but obviously quality and longevity is an issue.
 
tom203 said:
It took Shindengen a long time to offer the series SH-775- my guess is they spent a long time fiddling with this gizmo, before offering it. They made gizziloins of the shunt style R/R's, so they are quite aware of potential problems on a PM charging system.
Click to expand...
It's been known for ages that shunt was a duff way of doing it, but cut-off was even worse, and Shindengen must have devised a reliable snubber/quench to take care of back-EMF. At least, I hope it's reliable and kinder to the windings.


tom203 said:
I'm more worried about the quality of stator manufacturing these days- lots of corners can be cut in the race to be the cheapest.

Get a new stator, and a Sh-775; consider mounting a onboard voltmeter to keep you informed about your charging system's status- usually there are warning signs ahead of complete failure.
Click to expand...

Well, I know what brought this latest failure on - neglectful of keeping the headlight (or other suitable load) on whenever I started up to go anywhere. That, coupled with an elderly stator with its old insulation made its demise inevitable.
Clean sheet - SH-775 from the US, new stator from MandP and good to go, I hope.
The onboard voltmeter is here already, but not fitted until I do the front end rebuild, as it would all have to come off again.

Anyone willing to act as a US relay for me?
 
There is the Compu-Fire that has a much longer track record. You might want to listen to Posplayr on this one. This combo would have never been designed because it would have never have fit the space requirements of an alternator but by dumb luck the combination might be better than an alternator as is. It would be nice to have more juice but I wouldn't be willing to sacrifice what it would take to get it.
 
tkent02 said:
How many charging failures do you guys actually have?

Still awaiting my first.
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When the bikes were working for a living, 5,6,7 days a week, the failures were few and far between. Of course, the windings (and insulation) were younger then, but I always ran with an auxiliary headlamp of 55W on as daytime running lamp, coupled with a set of Honda R/Rs.
I reckon on one failure per 100K for that period.
Now the windings and their insulation are old and deterioration taking place, so failure is to be expected, but it just pees me off that such a flawed design is still dogging me.
I hate bad design, simple as that.
 
I had one. Unfortunately it was before I had joined this site. After pulling the 750 out of mothballs after a dozen or so years, I fired it up boosting it with a running car. Fried the rr and replaced it after using much of the stator papers, but got stuck in an endless circle in one of the diagnosis sections so I just replaced it and good to go for two years now.....
 
It's a money mill. If you look at it differently, It's largely the reason there are a lot of affordable nice bikes out there for those of us who are willing to put some time into them. The way tkent02 is bragging about his charging systems, his bike is going to melt when he gets his first failure. Murphy and his cousins will all jump on him at the same time.:D
 
I have bought a few with charging problems, just haven't ever had one fail on me. I prefer those to the ones killed by lack of valve adjustment, it's easier to fix.
I get the impression some people are loosing two or three stators a year or something.

Who has had a lot of failures? More than one or two? Dozens?
 
GS(X)400 said:
Anyone has any recommendations for a brand of voltmeter. I found a nice little LCD one very cheap from China but obviously quality and longevity is an issue.
Click to expand...

I bought a NOS Stewart Warner Marine voltmeter off Ebay and mounted it prominently on my fairing.
 
To tell the truth, I bought two with charging problems before I knew any better. If I had known what I know know, they may have never failed.
 
No, I have had the system on my '78 and '79 parts bike both fail. I don't know if they were already damaged beyond repair when I got them or if knowing the signs that I have learned and doing something about it in time would have avoided the failure. The day I got them I should have been replacing burnt connectors and doing the necessary harness maintenance but I was totally ignorant of the signs and had to deal with the results. That was an education. The repairs and upgrades have been well worth it and I doubt I will ever be plagued with those problems again. I have gotten over the overriding urge to ride and have the patience to do it right the first time now. FYI, the '79 parts bike was parked with 4,300 miles on it and it had the typical burnt stator leads. Goes to show how bad the design was from the beginning.
 
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My original 79 GS1000 (Purchased new) fried the stator after a year of use. I was running around 190W of lighting back then so that may have been a contributor.;)

Last three bikes I've purchased (82 GS850GL, 80 GS1000G, 80 GS1000GL) all had either bad stators or bad R/Rs or both. That's how you get good deals on GSs today.:D Pull out the DVM and show them that the charging system is toast. They knew it was but now got caught so the price just dropped.:lol:
 
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