Which R/R wires connect to the stator?

[thatdood]

My manuel is contradicting itself.

Here:

It seems to be telling me that all three of the stator wires connect to the R/R.

And here:

It seems to be telling me that only two of the stator wires connect to the R/R.

?

thatdood

[cberkeley]

All three of the stator wires do connect to the R/R. On some bikes one stator goes to supply power the headlight. In some harnesses as the one below, one of the stator wires goes into the harness, runs up to the headlight bucket and loops back via a jumper, down to the R/R.
Essentially all three need to go to the R/R. Out of the R/R are two wires + and - which go the battery.

[focus frenzy]

correction, on some models one leg from the stator goes to the left switch pod.
on pre-80 and a very few 81 models (in America) they had the ability to turn off the headlight. when the headlight is turned off it also cuts off one leg of the stator to prevent overloading the regulator and burning it up.

some 80 and later GS still used the same harness as pre 80 bikes, they just jumped the wire so it made one big loop up to the headlight bucket and back down to the regulator.

in the charging system reliability mod you just cut that loop out and go dirrect.

the GS charging system (and many other bikes) works by dumping excess current not needed for charging, to ground, if you turned off the headlight and kept all three legs going to the regulator it would overheat and fail eventualy.

it does not help that they are mounted behind the engine and often away from a good cooling air flow, notice Harley mounts their regulastor in front of the engine!

and the original Katana has the regulator mounted out in the open on the side of the bike.

[SqDancerLynn1]

Even the new bikes have reg problems. just wire stator direct to reg. Most states require motorcycles to have the headlight on at all times.
So that and adding a good ground cable from the reg mounting bolt to the battery (-) of course... Helps with the reliability of the charging system. Just leave the extra wires that go to the handle switch disconnected