Smoking wires and hot rectifier

[suzukiguybri]

Ok i have been digging around with the search feature, but am having problems finding the issues i am dealing with so here goes.

1982 GS1100e, new wiring harness, new Dyna ignition, new battery. The bike has been sitting for around 6 years. I finally get it started, and the rectifier is getting very hot. So hot you cant touch it. Aslo behind the headlight in the bucket, where the right h-bar switch plugs into the harness the brown wire and the white wire with red tracer that jump back into the harness plug are getting sot enough they are melting. Any Ideals what to look at?? Any help would be awesome.

[almarconi]

I would suspect that your R/R is drawing too much current and overheating. Have you gone through the stator papers to determine the overall condition of your charging system?

Wires melt when too much current is passing through them. I would get a known good R/R, repair the melted wires and go from there.

[bonanzadave]

Dirty corroded connectors produce resistance. Electrical friction. That produces heat. Get a can of spray electrical contact cleaner and unplug and spray every connector on the bike. Do the grounds and the fuse box too.

[suzukiguybri]

Ok i will read the stator papers and do the contact cleaner on all the connections and report back with what i find.

[Nessism]

Ok i will read the stator papers and do the contact cleaner on all the connections and report back with what i find.

Making sure your R/R is properly grounded is critical. General recommendation for any GS bike is to run the R/R directly over to ground before you do anything else to the electrical system.

[almarconi]

Ok i will read the stator papers and do the contact cleaner on all the connections and report back with what i find.

Hopefully you did not cook your R/R.

[BassCliff]

Hi,

I agree with checking and cleaning every electrical connection and ground on the entire wiring harness from the headlight bucket to the tail light, including the fusebox and the ignition switch. Go through the troubleshooting chart in The Stator Papers. You'll find stator, r/r, and other electrical tips on my website. Please stop by and help yourself.


Thank you for your indulgence,

BassCliff

[gremlin]

i have found on the bikes some times it is good to add a few grounds. every factory likes to go cheep on the wires. adding grounds from the motor to the frame and rectifier, is not a bad ideal.

use Anti-Oxidant Joint Compound for the connections. you should be able to find something like this local http://www.gacopper.com/ConnectionGrease.html

[propflux01]

OK, you said new wire harness. I looked on my schematic for my 1983 'GK, and it shows the red/white, but in place of brown, its green and white. These are the infamous "headlight stator leg" wires. If it were me, I would get rid of all that and wire your stator directly to your R/R. That would solve headache number one. If that, and ground checks, do not cure your problem, then you have a short somewhere drawing all the current your stator-R/R can give out, hence heating the wires. First go through the stator pages making note about shorts to ground on the stator (I just replaced a stator on a bike that had almost verbatim symptoms your talking about, it had one leg shorting to ground, but not all the time, but getting things hot enough that I couldn't hold wires), next, wire that R/R directly to your stator. Next, check and clean ALL grounds. add more if needed. If nothing changes, break out the meter and start checking each wire for shorting. Let us know what you find!!