i found a fried connection this weekend (plastic was melted to the wire caps), cut it out and just reattached and taped. it was the connection from the stator. I rode for an hour to an hour and a half combined on sat and sun. when turned off the battery started at 13.05V (it was on a trickle charger) and ended at 12.25V When i had it on and at about 5k the battery was around 12.25-12.50. i thought the charging system was supposed to charge above 13V?

jimmy -- if the vehicle is turned off while jumping the bike it wont do any damage to any part of the bike. it only draws the voltage it normally would from the bikes battery

cinderfella -- i thought about downloading one at work but im only 21 and am going back down to school next week. (im currently interning for a company..last day is this friday; pretty excited)

 

I would go ahead and solder those connections together and tape them, you don't want something to rattle loose just to tear back into it in a couple weeks or months. (voice of experience)

And the voltage isn't really the way you can measure the charge of the battery. The fact that you started at 13.05 and ended at 12.25 doesn't really tell you that the battery lost a charge. The more important thing here is the amperage that the battery is storing. I've had a battery that would read 12.2 but would not crank my car over worth anything. The amps are what determines if the battery is "dead" or not.

But you are correct when you say that the charging system is supposed to charge about 13V. So I would definitely look into that. Did you ever go through the diagnostics in the manual? If not I can write up a little something.

I'm in the same boat as you. My last day at my internship was Friday, moving down to campus this week.

 

well i left my bike at my buddies so he can take mine and his down to school. anyways, he took it out last night and when he got back, said the battery was down to 11.8 (bike off) and that the frame around the r/r was super hot. he made a joke about how its going to explode it was so hot. i know the r/r is supposed to get hot, but he has a lot of experience with cars/bikes and im pretty sure he wouldnt use the word explode if it didnt seem out of the ordinary.

i'm actually going over to his house tonight so we can reassemble his forks and put everything together. i guess thats a good time to go through this electrical fault finding bs. i think im going to download a manual at work just so i can get a head start on what the steps are and whatnot. im sure that between two of us we'll be able to figure it out, but a write up wouldnt hurt either if you dont mind.

another thing. does it matter if the connections are soldered or not? we used tube cap connectors (dont know the proper name) and crimped and taped..is that good enough?

also, where are you going to school? just curious. with your mechanical knowledge i would assume for engineering but thats just a guess

 

Hopefully the two of you will be able to figure that out. It can be a pain but once it's all fixed the peace of mind is well worth it.

I'll work on a write up sometime either tonight or tomorrow and post it. It seems like plenty of people are having trouble diagnosing R/R problems so it probably wouldn't be a bad idea.

Those should hold just fine for the connections. I'm not too sure there even is a proper name for them, but I know what you're talking about. I just wanted to make sure you didn't just strip the wire and twist them together and tape them. But those crimped connections hold great.

And I'm going to University of Louisville for engineering. How about you?

 

sorry for the delay. been moving out and in the last week. tore into the bike today and the first thing i checked was the r/r since thats what went wrong last time. anyways you can see the connections below (red circles).. 2 of them are fried. another connection i replaced a few months ago was also fried. (green cirlce). so i guess my question now is why do these connections keep frying?? I did replace the stator a few months ago and it wasnt OEM, i couldnt afford it, could that be the culprit?? im going to replace the connections and see if that fixes the charging system, which it should, but i dont understand why the r/r keeps getting messed up like this. Anyone have any ideas? also, does anyone have any idea where these 2 connections come from/go to??

oh, and im going to school at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology for engineering. civil, not mechanical or electrical haha

 

thats cool. im at Wentworth Institute of Technology Double majoring in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering. gonna graduate with 2 degrees in 2013... What type of engineering are you cinderfella

 

I'm at University of Louisville for biomedical engineering.
I'm not sure why those connections keep frying though. Have you checked the AC voltage off of the stator or the resistance of the stator?
Sorry it's been taking me forever to get back, just trying to enjoy college before the homework hits.

 

its cool, I've been trying to do the same..

I'm not sure I know how to measure the voltage or resistance for the stator..

got a quick DIY for me?

 

With the bike running you can check the voltage. Put your multimeter on the AC voltage setting. Then read the voltage between the three yellow wires, doing two at a time, trying every combination.
With the bike off, put your multimeter in the resistance setting. Again, trying every possible configuration between the three yellow wires. I believe resistance is supposed to be around 1 ohm. If you get anything different, I'd say the stator is the culprit.

 

alright, so anything electrical is just magic to me. I set the multimeter to ACV 200 and revved to 5k. I didnt get a reading any higher than 10? Also, i didnt get any resistance either. All i know is that when i test the battery at 5k, its only at 12.00V. Now im almost positive thats because the r/r is shot, I'm just trying to figure out whats frying it and im not sure if those results from the stator would do that.

I dont know if it matters, but i took the readings from the r/r, too..

I dont want to sound dumb, but i think you're going to have to basically spell it out for me. I guess I just need to make some EE friends haha