Stator wires frying again

[mushman]

GS1100EZ died again today and I knew just where to look for the trouble as it happened the same way last summer. The 3 wires coming from the Electrex stator had melted and fused at the connection going to the Electrex R/R, effectively halting the bike. This happened last sumer (about 1500 miles ago) and after I cleaned and re-connected the wires, the output and specs from the stator, battery, and R/R all checked out within the limits. This year a new battery went in and after about 400 miles the meltdown happened again. Any ideas as to what could be causing this "intermittent" pain in the.... to rear its ugly head again. Before I go replacing stators and R/Rs (I did clean many connections and frame grounds) I'm hoping for great definitive answer to this mystery. Help!

82 GS1100EZ

[bwringer]

What sayeth the voltmeter now? Is everything still working OK?

Many of us solder these connections and cover them with waterproof adhesive-lined heat shrink tubing. Bullet connectors quickly corrode and overheat in this highly critical (and truthfully, somewhat undersized) connection. Did you find corrosion in the connectors this time around? Were they at all loose?

Also, is the new R/R well-grounded to the frame, not just the battery box? Did you bypass the headlight loop on the one stator leg?

[duaneage]

Poor connections increase resistance at the connection itself but would not cause more current to flow from the stator. If the stator lead wires melted together that indicates a short circuit between the stators wires. Heat builds up AT the bad connection only. The wires on either side of the bad connection actually see less heat because of reduced flow.

One or more of the wires from the stator is either touching the engine block (highly possible considering the path the wires take) or else they are shorting to one of the other two stator leads.

The next ugly possiblity is there is a short in the RR that is sending the output to ground. This can be verified with a ohmmeter by measuring the resistance between the RR inputs and the engine block and see if you get less than 400 ohms.

My guess is one or more of the wires is touching the engine. Or else they used the wrong kind of lead wires to make the stator with (very unlikely)

[mushman]

Fried stator wires

Thanks for the feedback. I'll be all over this today and tomorrow looking for all that you both said and remedying as guided. Again thanks for the response. I will post with the results.

[Redman]

Sounds the same as my experince. I found the problem to be the connectors themselves, although I seemed to think the problem was were the wires connected to the connectors, as opposed to where one connector connected to the other connector, but resolution is the same: cut them off and connect wires directly together. Then later I found GSR and found these connectors are a common problem as brwringer mentioned above. So good that you found GSR sooner than I did.

If you are conecrend about soldering the wires togeter: you could use the small grey wirenuts. Then you can take back apart for further electrical checks with a meter. But the wire nuts can corrode over time, but can be taken apart, cleaned up and replaced.