Bad ground: Can this affect the charge THAT much?

[Anonymous]

If one has an insufficient ground, can that REALLY affect the charging system on the 1980 GS1100 (or any bike for that matter)???

If so, please explain how this improper ground actually does so.

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Bad Ground...

Yes,it can affect the charging,as you're not getting a proper connection,therefore the electrickery isn't flowing properly.Imagine a partially blocked water hose,water comes through,but not the full amount.Sorry if this is a bad analogy,it's the only way I can explain it.A good connection is like an unblocked hose,everything flows properly.

[Anonymous]

I had a charging problem with me 850 sometimes it charged & other times it didn't, Had a shop check it out & couldn't find any thing, Long story short , the rectifier is bolted to the bottom of the batt. box & would loose ground, I took the ground wire &from the rec. & ran to the ground strap for the batt, No more charging problems A bad ground can cause some funning things

[saaz]

The GS series (and others) have relatively dumb charging systems. They do no measure actual system voltage and adjust output to suit. They just sit there and think if they are delivering a certain voltage then that is fine. If ground wires and conenctions are not spot on what the system puts out and what is actually happening to the battery voltage can get seriously out of whack.

[Anonymous]

When the charging system has a bad (high resistance) ground, the bad ground will eat up some of the charging system's voltage (because it acts like an extra resistor in the circuit). The charger then is working at perhaps 5 or 6 volts while the battery is cranking out 12. The charging system's 6 volts is insignificant and the battery does 95% of the work until the battery voltage falls to something closer to 6 volts. A 6 volt bike battery has about 5% of the charge that a full battery has. Therefore you are left with a very weak battery.

Furthermore, when you have only 5% charge in a battery and try to do to it things which require more, the battery may easily be permanently damaged. Trying to take something it doesn't have.

The numbers are sketchy but you get the point.

Michael