Have you downloaded or bought the factory service manual? The bike isnt supposed to have more than 12.5 volts at idle. To test these you hold the rpm at 6k and read the voltage at the battery then.

If the car is running it is putting out 60 amps, and yes it is forcing it into the bike, that is how power works. If the car were off which is the proper way to jump start a bike it is fine because the bike will pull what it needs from the cars battery. These electrical systems are designed to handle around 10 amps max. Your 60amp car will fry the stator, rectifier, and battery and anything else that can't handle the amperage hitting it.

 

Then why doesn't all the electrical stuff in my car not blow?? It's all the same basic electronics (ecu, guages, headlights, tail lights). Same bulbs, same resistors, diodes, chips, etc. Lets see, the deck is only built to pull 15 amps (probably less) so that should blow, the ecu I think only has a 10-15 amp fuse, so it should blow too then. The alternator is regulated - it only puts out what it needs to or everything in my civic would fry too. What would happen to my car battery if I just kept pumping 60 amps into for hours on end - it'd be toast.

 

I'm tired of arguing with you on the subject. Search more and guess less. You want to fry your bike by all means keep doing what your doing.

 

Stamp, I suggest you do some searching on the topic of jumping your bike, but I'll sum it up for you.

Jumping your bike with a running car has the potential to fry your harness, R/R, battery, etc. It puts out way more juice than the electrical system on your bike is rated for, and is a common reason why the R/R fails. This is common knowledge and it seems Jon is trying to throw some solid advice your way.

 

Just an illustration of one of the differences.... the OEM battery for my '04 Mazda3 is rated for 640 cold cranking amps. The OEM battery for my F3 is rated for 120. That's more than 5 times the amperage. These little motorcycle batteries are just not made to handle all of the juice that your car's charging system puts out to keep it's battery topped.

Bottom line -- if you're jumping your bike you should never do it while your car is running.

Incidentally, you shouldn't expect your bike to go above 12.5V at idle. It's not made to charge at that level and I am skeptical that simply changing the R/R would change that. For one thing, the stator is the part that does the charging, and the R/R only regulates how much of that charge gets to the battery and how much is stopped at the R/R. This effect only takes place at higher RPMs, as the return from your stator at idle is fairly low. You should be more concerned with how many volts you are seeing at 2.5-3k (should be around 14V) in matters of charging system diagnoses.

 

I wasn't tryinig to jump my bike, the bike was already running - my problem is that the voltage at idle is barely above 12v - less that 12.5. This was the only way I had to test and see if the bike would act "normal" (aka not stutter and die) with 13+ volts at idle. Once my R/R gets hot after riding for 15-20 minutes the bike won't run unless it's sitting at over 3k with a "good charge". The old style R/R just aren't efficient enough at coverting A/C to DC once it gets hot to charge my battery at idle. This is why I want to try the new style R/R and see if it can actually keep a good voltage at idle because it's not losing a substantial amount of its power to just heat. With the good voltage from my car my bike idled and revved correctly. As soon as I took off the cables within a minute the bike was stuttering again and had a hard time revving. I've had this same problem with 2 R/R's and yes it was doing it before I tried the jumper cables from the car. I have tested the stator and don't have any shorts in it either. I get 13+ volts over 2k. From my reading, the old style R/R's are doing this with a lot of the older bikes, not just hondas but across the board. I guess I'll just have to order the part and install it and see what happens.

 

I dont think my problem is with the rectifier, but then again Ill find out on THursday when the fuel-cut relay comes in. My logic in ruling it out ( or rather narrowing it to the fuel cut relay) is that the wires going to the relay have normal(ish) voltage when unplugged and the bike running. They also are pushing 12v with just ignition on. However once plugged into the relay and the bike started getting 8v from my output regardless.
By creating a relay that basically bypasses the fuel-cut relay, and then jumpering the bl/blu directly to ground, I was able to get the pump to work correctly. That Bl/Blu is not the R/R but it goes from ICM to coil #1 to fuel-cut relay. Thats it.
I have the service manual, and went through those steps. When things arent working in conjunction the troubleshooting seems to lead on goose chase though.

Thanks for the advice. Ill let yall know how it goes this weekend.
CatDaddy

 

Stamp - instead of the "new style' R/R, you can get one with the same specs that's just made better. I got mine from regulatorrectifier.com.

 

Fuel Cut Relay was the culprit. pushing higher voltage (closer to 12) from the output in surges that allow the pump to work. I guess the coil #1 and ICM work together to decide when to pump fuel.
Good Luck

 

Ya, I've had to replace the fuel cut relay also. Took like an hour of tracing wires and testing to figure out that it wasn't getting the correct voltage out of the fuel cut relay and to figure out how the thing works.