How much for your new reg

[jimg]

Keith Winter
For example; how much voltage do we need for our bike's? The lights, ignition, battery, they are all 12 volt right? Do we need 14.5 to 15 volts? No we do not. We only NEED 13.5 volts to get the maximum life out of the battery and everything else.

See my comment above about sources in parallel. You DO need something more than 13.6 volts in order for the generator to supply most of the current the bike needs. How much more depends on the resistive losses in the wiring and battery lifetime.

You must determine the best charge/discharge cycle rate versus battery overcharging in order to know the absolute value to use. You have to run tests to determine this. My guess is that something like 14 volts is probably close.

Our stators are wound with a certain size of wire stock and the size of this wire gives us the relationship. The smaller the wire the more of it can be wound on there the higher the induced voltage will be. However the smaller wire will pass less current and there is the relationship we are looking for. As current goes up voltage goes down, voltage up current down. This relationship can not be changed so it then becomes how much of each do you need. When making millions of bikes thick wire costs more than thin wire. Also as thick wire passes more current the SCR's in the regulator will have to be heavier duty along with the diodes in the rectifier, this also cost's more, so you make everything JUST enough to get by and still have the bare minimum to make things work. Can you see what I mean? I took this and applied it to my stator when I re-wound it. Do we really need 80 volts ac across each circuit, no we don't. I re-wound my stator with a thicker guage wire and lost about 5 wraps on each post. This means I get 50 volts ac across each set of wires instead of 80, but who cares as I get more of what I want and that is current. I still get more than 25 volts DC coming out of the rectifier with the reg unhooked. If I re-wind my stator again I will go with even bigger wire as even 25 volts is more than you need, but more current will be the result.

Be careful here. Smaller wire doesn't pass less current. What happens is the resistance of the smaller wire results in voltage loss and more heat generation than larger wire.

Your assumption that a generator is a constant current source is faulty. A generator is NOT a contant current source. You may be too young to remember cars, trucks, and tractors with generators and ammeters.

Put an ammeter in series with the lead to your battery to check this! Now check with a discharged battery. You will get a lot of current. Then put a fully charged battery in and check again. Your current will be reduced to a low value.

The voltage AND current the stator can generate is really based upon the number of lines of magnetic flux being cut in a given unit of time. This is why the voltage (and consequently the current available) goes up as you speed up the generator. Smaller wire, i.e. more windings, will give you more lines of magnetic flux being cut in a revolution which will give a higher capability of current and voltage. On the other hand, you WILL have more resistive losses in the smaller wire that cause more heat. There is a tradeoff here. The only way to know the best solution is to put a variable load on the generator (like a battery tester) and check the voltage and current available with each wire size.

I would hope Suzuki did this testing and used the best solution. On the other hand, manufacturing costs do play a part and may not give exactly the best solution.

[dale schafer]

wiring a honda R/R to a 77 GS 550

Hi, I never got a response on my request for help, I assume this is different than the others as it has a voltage regulator and a rectifier. Anyone out there inclinded to help. Dale

[Keith Winter]

Hi,
Boy do I hate work, it sure mess's with one's hobby. Anyway, were do I start. jimg; You are starting to scare me! First off I guess we better clear up the fact that these bike's do NOT have generators , they have alternators. I AM old enough to remember cars, mine as well, that had generators, AND the cars that had the first alternators with external regulators both mechanical AND electronic. You are right though about none of this being constant current and in one of my post's I think I mentioned this. No matter WHAT we do nothing is going to be constant as we don't have an adjustable electro magnetic feild to play with, like car charging systems have! And actualy NO 12 volt battery need's more than 2.3 volts per cell, this of coarse is 13.8 volts maximum, to get the most life. It might interest you to know that at a volts per cell range of between 2 minimum and 2.3 maximum you can expect 200 or more cycles of charge out of any given battery, but if you go up or down as little as .25 of a volt of this rate the cycle rate will drop to about 50 before reduced storage capacity will start to take affect. If you would like to know more about ALL types of batteries, check out the ARRL Handbook any library should have them. Now, as far as your sources in parallel, the stator winding's are NOT in parallel they are in the classic "WYE" configuration, 3 set's of coils with the output taken from 2 set's in series as the flywheel/magnet spins around them, each set of coils on each "leg" of the WYE are also in series, add them up and this gives us the 50 or more volts across each set of wire's. If the stator was wound in a "DELTA" configuration then we would have something closer to the parallel system that you were talking about. We have, hopefully, cleared up the charge/ discharge cycle rate already, and the 13.8 max. battery voltage so what's left is the current demands that the bike needs. This is really an easy one, like you said, stick an amperage meter between the rectifier and the battery and measure the draw, with a fully charged battery of course. It should be very close to what the WATTAGE of everything running on the bike is. You can also get a very close guess by adding up the wattages in the book as well, of course you have to know what the ignition draws, but it probably is less than two amps. And also I'll give you the "smaller wire doesn't pass less current" thing, but, and you may know this, most people have a hard time understanding that electrons move on the OUTside of a conductor, not through it. So to explain in detail wire size versus current flow and voltage drop,,, well it's simple enough to say and understand that smaller wire will conduct less current. Oh and by the way, small wire does not mean voltage loss, the resistance in a wire is to current not voltage. A 2000 volt ceramic capacitor has leads a little bigger than a human hair and they are de-rated, the maximum that they will handle is almost 4000 volts and then it's the ceramic that burns out, not the wire. And also the size of wire WILL have a affect on current output, have you ever done any work with transformers? In every transformer I have ever seen the secondary VOLTAGE is completely based on how many windings there are in relation to the primary windings. With any set amount of input (or magnetic flux lines) the output voltage will be higher with more windings in the secondary than the primary, and visa versa of course, BUT the more windings in the secondary to increase voltage the less usable CURRENT you will have in the secondary. The reasons for this are not important to most out there but if anyone has a hard time understanding why you can't have both in something as small as our stators, look at a big ARC WELDER. An arc welder has both current AND voltage, does anybody want to pack one of THOSE around on their bikes? OK, back to the parallel thing, you almost have it right, BUT, we only have 1 diode for + and 1 diode for -- on each leg AC of the stator so these are not parallel on the input side. If we had 2 diodes for each positive and negative swing then we WOULD have to address the resistance of each diode and have equalizing resistors for them for the current, but this is not the case as the only time this need's to be done is if the diode's used can not handle the current draw, and diodes are cheaply available that can take WAY more current than out stators could ever hope to produce.
Also AC motor capacitors are there for STARTING the motor NOT AC filtering as in my reg project. I'm not really too sure where you got the idea that I was trying to get DC from the capacitor, and I really don't know why I would want to put diodes in the stator when my reg HAS a diode rectifier ahead of the DC regulator anyway. I think somewhere along the line you have become confused, no DC regulator I know of can regulate an AC input. There are what they call "switching reg's" but even they need a DC input, so I'm not to sure what you mean. Maybe you got the term "wrap around" mixed up. This has nothing to do with diodes or AC or capacitors, this is the reg circuit that DOES read the output to the battery and also allows short/overload protection. Anyway, the off/on action of the SCR type reg is crap, and the reasons are pretty clear to most out there. And jimg maybe I better way to put it is, the battery has to absorb the SHOCK of the off/on SCR reg and as the SCR reg is a off and on switch( with no inbetween) it is also turning off and on the current as well, and this IS NOT good for the battery no matter how fast it can turn off and on. Get yourself a copy of the ARRL Handbook and check it out.
I have the rec/reg all packaged, for anyone following this, and have been heat and overload testing it. I can say honestly that short of your bike catching fire and melting the whole unit, it will sense and shut down if the temperature get's to critical. The reg has been heated with a propane torch to test this, and short of riding into a volcano or something, heat will not hurt anything. When the housing get's to hot to touch is when the limiting starts to take place, and if the outside air temp got that hot, well you wouldn't still be riding anyway! I can adjust when the temperature starts to shut it down, and I might make it limit at a lower temp, but it does work and thats all that I want out of it. I will try to check back on here more often to address any input, sorry but the working life really sucks!
Keith

[IanFrancisco]

I thought there might be others out there who want the same thing... I have no intentions of trying to get rich from this and, really, I don't care if not one single person out there wants one of these.

I'll bet there's quite a few of us here who would be interested in the whole system, reg, rect, and stator. I spent $130USD for an Electrex RR and then another $150 for an Electrex stator incl. shipping and while the charging system is working well at the moment, I keep my fingers crossed (not while riding ). Those parts were not quite plug and play, I still had to shorten the stator leads and solder on connectors. The idea of rectifying first then having a DC regulator that doesn't waste power AND protects the battery and stator? Gotta like that!! Why couldn't they build 'em that way in the first place? They are Japanese aren't they? Same as Sony and Panasonic etc. How much would these custom Winter engineered parts cost? I think lots of people would be willing to pay $300 or more for something that works great. If the battery lasts twice as long with this charging system that's $40 saved. The longer the battery lasts the more the cost of the Winter system is offset. Kudos!! I wish I hadn't spent my money on the Electrex parts now. I would have spent the summer putting the bike on the charger every night if I had known something like this was possibly going to be available...

[mixongw]

Re: Rectifier and regulator wiring 1977 GS550

Can someome draw me a schematic to wire a S/H 232-12 one piece rectifier/regulator for a Honda to a 1977 GS 550 with SEPERATE regulator and rectifier. The S/H 232-12 has 3 yellow wires, these should go to the stator. It has one red wire that I assume goes to the fused power supply (Tail light?). Then it has a green wire that I read should go to the ground on the battery box and on to the negitive terminal of the battery. It also has a small brown wire,. I do not have the bike at my location so I can not look at it now. A schematic would show me what to do with the wiring and also that which goes to the GS 550 seperate regulator. I have the Honda rectifier/regulator in my possesion, Your help would be appriciated. Dale

Dale,

These guys are too busy with their technical sabre rattling to address your question. The three yellow wires of the new regulator go to the bike's stator wires. The red wire should go to the red wire that was in the bike's factory connector that also contained the stator connections. The green wire should go to ground. The brown wire is the sense wire for the regulator. Connect it to a positive switched source, such as the tail light circuit.

Gary

[rustybronco]

Dale, I think you got the answer you needed...so i'm sorry for this post.

I'm not trying to rattle a sabre just trying to refresh my memory. we all are just trying to learn and give our help to each other correct?

Keith if i remember correctly at low frequency (starting with d.c.) electrons travel through the conductor until the frequency increases and then they travel on the outside of the conductor (skin effect) am i correct? it's been a long time.

Boy do I like learning and learning and learning (maybe relearning?) what i forgot...

[mixongw]

My "sabre rattling" comment was supposed to be funny. I love tech discussions. I agree with rustybronco. I'm afraid that in order to get any skin effect going on, the engine would have to be turning a little too fast. If skin effect was present at low frequencies, I could wire my house with copper plated wire instead of solid copper. But, alas.....

[Keith Winter]

Hey all,
I thought the sabre rattling comment was great! And Ian, thanks for your input AND price stuff. Now, you guy's HAVE found a flaw in my babble and this causes me to think that I've really overloaded what brain cells I have left working! It would take me day's to find the info we need on THIS subject, but, yes the lower the freq. the more electrons travel through a conductor. I am not going to say I actually remember the fine points of how to calculate electron flow on the conductor as opposed to through the wire, and we would have to know how many cycles per second (Hz) our stators are making at what rpm, the resistance of how many feet of wire on each post of the stator, AND probably at least a WEEK with a calculator AND my wife at this point would surely serve me with divorce papers.....needless to say, and remember how bad I am at explainations, we are dealing with AC in our stator windings and this will cause some loss through the wire and with our very limited amount of power, AC, I guess I should have said that there is a skin affect and resistance " through" the wire. Thanks you guy's for keeping me honest! My problem is, like most out there, I do this stuff when I get home from the daily grind and what little mind I have left working just want's to shut off instead of sorting out electronic theory AND trying to explain it, sorry.
And sorry to you too Dale, for it taking so long to get an answer to your question!
NOW, one of the past question's we had on this post was something like " would this reg increase the amount of power output for extra light's, ect" or at least it was something like that. And of course the answer to this was a no, BUT, it did get me thinking about that. As allot of you know living here in the frozen wasteland of Canada is not good for even half a year of "on road" motorcycle testing. So I started to look into way's I could reproduce the 3 phase output of our stator's in my basement, as it's not allot of fun trying to work with this stuff outside when it's frozen and snowing. There MAY be a way to re-configure the stator windings and get more power out of them. This statement could cause an explosion of "sabre rattle" so the word, "MAY" has to be remembered here. Hopefully this weekend I will get out and do some test's on my bike and stator. How much more power remains to be seen, and it may produce a unworkable voltage, AND, of course the stator would have to be re-wound to put things to a real test, but it may be possible. A quik check on my worn out calculator shows that a SCR type reg rated for the stock winding system might not last to long, and that might explain why they never did this when these bikes were new. I'm fairly sure I'll find a flaw in this, but we will never know till it's checked. Thanks for the input and if there is anyone out there that has tried a different winding configuration, let us know!
Keith