Stator Question

[OklahomaPomade]

I took the bike out for her maiden voyage and, well, she died. She would run great in the garage and up and down my street fine until I turned on the headlights and used the turn signals.

I understand the stator is 3 phase, with (presumably) one leg going to the battery, one for lights, and one for spark.

Theoretically, I could switch these around temporarily, couldn't I?

Or am I all wet on this one???

[Billy Ricks]

Sorry, you're all wet on this one. You do have three legs but they either all run through the R/R or two do with one going to the headlight. What you're confusing is the fuse block configuration. If it runs without blowing fuses the odds of the stator being the problem go down. I don't have my Word document with me that I have testing procedures written up on. Check some of the other threads on R/R problems. Testing procedures get posted almost daily. A quick test is to see how much voltage you're getting at 5,000 rpm across the battery terminals. You want to be around 14 volts +/- .5V.

[Redman]

Yep, stator is 3 phase, each phase is AC power. All three phases go to regulator/rectifyer ("R/R"). The R/R puts out the DC (one wire).

If it looks like one phase from stator goes somehwere other than the other two, that is because one phase used to be switched on/off by headlight switch in pre 1980 models, and in some later models that phase is not switched by the headlight switch but the wiring still goes up towards the headlight switch and then just jets jumpred back.

So to answer your specific question, yes, you could switch around the phases, but, no it will not make any difference.

[OklahomaPomade]

Ok, thanks. I'll get a multimeter on it tomorrow. I just printed out the stator papers so this should be no sweat to diagnose.