Why does my electrical system suck? R/R issues.....

[qslim]

Just put in a new stator (open winding) and regulator (three shorted diodes). The thing is now charging @ between 12.1v and 12.5v up to 5k rpm. I checked the new RR before I put it in, and the diodes are good. The stator is puting out between 40 and 70vAC. All three legs are going right into the RR. The + wire from the regulator is going right to the battery, and the wire is new, w/ no voltage drop. What the hell?

[Anonymous]

Well...

I probably shouldn't post since I don't know much about bikes, but I do know electronics and automotive alternators...so here goes nothing.

Are you sure the battery isn't discharged, pulling current to recharge, and pulling down the voltage you're measuring? It's not unusual for alternator voltage in a car to read low when charging a dead battery.

Put the battery on a charger, bring it to full charge, disconnect the charger, wait an hour, measure battery voltage. The reason for waiting an hour is to allow surface charge to dissipate and get a true battery voltage reading. Skip this is you like, or just watch battery voltage until it seems to have stabalized after the charger has been removed.

Then, start up the engine and see if that alternator spinning causes battery voltage to rise higher than nominal.

I hope that's it, if not, hopefully it'll get you closer to an answer.

Byron

[qslim]

Battery is brand new also. I should have mentioned that.

[redliner1973]

Battery is brand new also. I should have mentioned that.

What is indicated voltage at battery?

[qslim]

12.1v. I load tested it just to be sure, and it passed with flying colors. What gets me is I can see it charging when the bike is running, and the charge increases as engine speed is increased, but only up to about 12.5v. So it seems like a high resistance problem somewhere, but i've drop tested every darn connection in that circuit, and I can't find a thing!

[Anonymous]

How about grounds?

I have no idea what kind of block grounding issues your motorcycle engine might have, but in the automotive world it is quite easy to have a corroded high impedance ground connection isolating (or causing a potential) between different parts of a vehicle.

Perhaps engine ground and battery ground are not well coupled. If your alternator ground is engine ground and your battery ground is something else; and they're coupled by wire...make sure you don't have a potential between the two caused by corrosion and/or bad connection. You can check this by measuring voltage between the two ground points. You should get 0v.

I've overlooked ground problems many, many times. I hope it's that simple.

[duaneage]

Ground problem or burnt connections.

However....

You said you had shorted diodes, so maybe something else on the bike is shorting it out. Pull fuses for everything except the main fuse you need to run the bike., If the voltage comes up you found it. It is possible that something shorted out the regulator and is doing a number on the new one right now.

The 850 had a more complicated turn signal system than most bikes, pull the fuse for that first.

[redliner1973]

12.1v. I load tested it just to be sure, and it passed with flying colors. What gets me is I can see it charging when the bike is running, and the charge increases as engine speed is increased, but only up to about 12.5v. So it seems like a high resistance problem somewhere, but i've drop tested every darn connection in that circuit, and I can't find a thing!

If you load tested it good, but you are only reading 12.1 volts, you may want to try another meter. Your battery should be statically producing 12.54V-fully charged. Perhaps your meter is running lower than it should, giving you a false indication?

[focus frenzy]

move the ground for the regulator to the battery, if yout regulator mounts like mine (80 1000G) it is mounted to the bottom of the battery box and the ground connects to the mounting screw.
the problem is the battery box often is not grounded good, this causes the regulator to not work correctly.

also a point that has been covered, try a differant meter, another member here went through hell with his bike trying to figure out why his bike was overcharging. after parts swapping wiring and head scratching it was discovered that his meter was reading wrong the whole time!!

also, just because it is a new regulator, doesn't meen it is any good, and the diode test won't show a fault in the regulators ability to shunt at the correct voltage.

if you are getting 70 volts AC on all three legs at 5K RPM, all connections are good/ eliminated, and the regulator is wired with ground dirrect to battery ground, and output to battery positive, then the regulator is bad.

I hope you didn't get a electro-sport regulator.

[qslim]

I did get the electrosport unit, actually, because it was viewed favorably in the stator papers. But now after reading a few different posts I get the feeling those things can be trouble. What other types are out there that are recommended if my new regulator turns out to be sour?

[duaneage]

Honda cx 500 mod. 20 bucks on ebay and instructiosn for installing it are all over the forum. PM me and I will give you complete instructions with pictures.

Electrosport turned a corner recently and their regulators have been DOA for a lot of people. For 120 bucks there should be no DOAs, they should be bench checking them but I suspect they are not. All this stuff is made in China nowadays to maximize profit, not customer service.

[braindead0]

I'm guessing the CX-500 RR will work for my '77 GS-550? I should be able to figure out the wiring easy enough.. but thought I'd ask..

[mixongw]

12.1v. I load tested it just to be sure, and it passed with flying colors. What gets me is I can see it charging when the bike is running, and the charge increases as engine speed is increased, but only up to about 12.5v. So it seems like a high resistance problem somewhere, but i've drop tested every darn connection in that circuit, and I can't find a thing!

If you load tested it good, but you are only reading 12.1 volts, you may want to try another meter. Your battery should be statically producing 12.54V-fully charged. Perhaps your meter is running lower than it should, giving you a false indication?

I found out that after replacing the R/R on mine that at 5KRPM the voltage at the battery was 12.6V. I kept the meter on the battery for awhile and it finally came up over 13V and kept climbing. If the battery is low it can load the alternator to display a lower voltage than normal. I had to give it a little time.

[qslim]

Well, it turns out that I suck, and not my electrical system. Turns out one of the stator wires got pinched going back through the cover, and was grounding out on the case. Repaired the insulation, now I charge up to about 13.5. I guess that's what I get for troubleshooting a system *@%^$*@%^$*@%^$*@%^$ed off. I was sitting here yesterday trying to get the thing working while bike after bike went past my house....you know the feeling. Sometimes you have to walk away for a bit.

[Hotblack]

Are you guys talking about the Electrex R/Rs? They are the ones who sponsor the site and are mentioned in the Stator papers. I've heard good things up to now, it's a shame if they're going Hollywood.

I was just out in the garage scratching my head over the 750. It still has the original charging components, i.e. the seperate rectifier with the regulator mounted under the battery box. What got this all started was when I took my battery out to check the water it was slightly low (no big surprise, it hasn't had any added since it was new 1 1/2 years ago). I noticed the charge was also low, about 3 balls in the hydrometer, about 2 in one of the cells. That's not so great, since the bike is ridden all the time, and I just replaced a battery in the 550 after almost four years in the same condition. Well I added a little water (it was almost down to the lower line when I checked) and put it on the charger. The battery won't take a charge though, it seems, beyond what it had when I took it out. This is sort of good news, maybe the charging system IS working okay and the battery is just naff, but I'm wondering if something MADE the battery go bad in such a short time. It still starts and runs the bike fine, but it should be taking a nice full even charge at this point I'd think. Well, I've heard of them going bad in a couple of years, but I've heard of them lasting much longer too. Hmmmmmm....

As far as the charging system, the stator tests good, all legs have proper resistance, and put out around 75 volts. Whew! The rectifier seems to have good diodes in it. I don't know how to test the regulator except to see that the battery is getting correct voltage, which it seems to - with the lights off. With the lights on I get mysterious variable readings, it will read 13.whatever, and as I rev the engine it will sink down to the high 12s over a minute or so. Weird! However, the battery being naff could be throwing that all off so I need to get a battery tomorrow before I can be sure. Oh one other thing, all the plastic sleeves on the R/R connections have black spots on them, as if they'd gotten a little too warm at one point, though the connections are good. That's troubling. The wires get warm when testing, but the rectifier doesn't get terribly warm.

Well all of this is up in the air and I need a battery before I can really be sure of anything (except that the stator and R/R are okay - because they were tested out of the circuit), but what got me started on this was that I took the battery box out to check the ground on the regulator. The ground was -ok-, I cleaned it up anyway, but I couldn't help but notice that the battery box seems pretty sketchy in terms of grounding. In fact the plate that has the fuses, rectifier, and starter relay on it mounts to the battery box as well which makes my suspect ALL the grounds. I was going to run the regulator ground out to that area until I noticed that. That's what's REALLY got me scratching my head. It almost seems like it would be a good idea to run some kind of ground strap from the whole battery box mess to the frame. Any ideas?