Good grief. . .if that's a typical stator winding for Honda, we are all in trouble. That is the worst winding patternI've ever seen and I suspect that that imbalance in the generated field that this winding would cause, could lead to pre-mature failure. I've been fortunate with my '96 900RR, but I suppose it gives me something to worry about on my new 1000RR. Stator windings should not fail when they are properly designed and there is no reason to do what they did here. Isn't there a 30A fuse someplace in this circuit? Under engineered is the term I would use here and the only thing I can come up with is that they did it to cut off a few ounces of weight. What a letdown.

I'm not yanking this crap out of my hind end. . I'm an electrical engineer with nearly 20 years of experience with AC and DC motors. I've never seen anything like it, but I work with much, muchlarger stator windings than what you see in this generator.

 

i don't know if the first part of what you said holds true
but i believe the CBR needs about 2500 rpm to start charging its battery

 

The Honda manuals states that you need to rev the engine at a stable 5000rpm when diagnosing electrical problems.

 

connect at multimeter to your rectifier output wire, mine gives a 14 volt charge to the battery at around 3 thousand rpm.

 

I'm not an electrical engineer, just an engineering student, but I do agree with Draco88 that the windings do look quite pathetic. The one to the left of top center looks like it only has maybe 10 windings on the outer portion, unless I'm just looking at it wrong. It could be that Honda produced a large batch of badly manufactured stators and that is what is causing the problem. I have an 87 CBR600 and the stator has a much tighter winding pattern. If enough people have the problem and if there VIN # happen to match up that you guys have stators from the same assembly line, then Honda should recall those stators.