Thanks, I did go this route, after reading the R/R sticky in the forum. Am I correct in thinking that since he included connectors, that all I have to do is unplug the old one, and screw in and plug in the new one? No splicing or other monkey business? Also, would putting thermal grease between the R/R and frame be a good idea for dissipating heat?

 

As far as I know, they are plug and play.

But, if your connectors/wires are burned on your wiring harness you will need to cut the old connectors off, strip the wires and install the new connectors.

The new R/R has cooling fins, it should be fine without any nasty grease ... Although it may not be a bad idea to put some shims behind the R/R to create a gap between the R/R and the mounting plate, but on second thought the mounting plate may also work as a heat sync.

 

I would shim it out that way wind will hit both sides and cool it down faster. If its pushed up against the metal its gonna hold heat. Dont put grease on it just shim it out about 1/8 - 1/4 of an inch it should be good. I have an 05 gsxr r/r on my bike for about 8 months no problems yet even after 2 1/2 hour trips non stop hard riding. Either one should be fine but i can hold my hand on mine after riding for a while and its not even hot. Good luck man get that thing back to riding the weather is starting to get nice again

 

Just about every OEM puts their R/R's tight on a mounting plate so the frame can serve as a heat sink and radiator, I bet they have good reason to do that. I don't know if a lot of airflow gets in under the tail fairing, but the mounting plate is open to a lot of airflow on the back. Thermal grease would help conduct heat to the frame, but I don't believe it's necessary, just a clean R/R and mounting plate. I don't think it would really matter how you mount one of those VRRPM3H R/R's though, they're huge and even passive convection should work well.

 

Okay, so I received the new R/R today. Because I know very little (nothing) about wiring, I'm confused, and have provided pictures as to what my situation is.


This is a picture of the wiring for the old rectifier. The five mostly-red wires were connected to the rectifier, and as you can see, four of them melted off. The green wire at the top is connected to the mounting bracket and I'm guessing is some kind of ground wire.


This is a picture of the old rectifier, and you can see the five wires attached to it.


Here is how the wires are integrated into the wiring harness. Notice the black marks on the frame where they shorted out.



And the new R/R (VRRPM3H) with I'm guessing extra connectors for the harness side.

Again, I'm very stupid with this stuff, so act like I'm in third grade. How do I attach the existing wires to these supplied connectors (I have no idea what the brass fittings or the tubing is for) and then connected to the new R/R? And, how do I go from what looks like five wires, to the eight wires on the new R/R?

 

Whoever owned the bike before you made a horrible mess of your wiring harness, and that is why it burned up so badly...

You need to cut the red wires off, and clean up the original wires that they are attached to.

Get yourself a little soldering iron, you can get a cheap one for around $20, some flux and some solder wire.

You'll also need a wire crimping tool

After you go out and buy all of that stuff we will have to look at the wiring diagram to determine which wires go where on those new plugs you have

The soldering iron/solder is to fuse those new connectors to the wires on your wiring harness, first you crimp the connectors over the wire then you solder them for a solid connection with very little resistance. (Resistance = hot wires)

 

I actually will have that stuff tomorrow morning. Somebody is coming down to help me out and is bringing a voltmeter, and i already have a soldering gun, with solder and flux. I have the service manual floating around on the internet, so I'm guessing there should be a wiring diagram in there?

On the service manual, it only shows the connector with five wires: three yellow, one red, and one green, along with the two ground wires on the bracket. So how do I go about attaching that to this R/R with eight wires?

 

That's a good question, Tony told me this is the unit we need (Haven't received mine yet).

I am sure if you send him an e-mail with these pictures and your concerns he will be much more knowledgeable than me!

 

Here's what Tony had to say:

"The double red and green wires are so only one set of terminals don't have to carry all the load. All the CBR600's that I've seen had the double red and green wires but these were earlier bikes than yours...

Anyway it shouldn't be any trouble to double up these 3 wires from the harness. The black wire is a voltage sensor wire and would connect to the main switched power lead and this wire should also be black."

Make sense? I'm reading this as saying to double up the double red and double green wires as single wires from the new R/R and connect them to the harness that way, but what about the connectors? So that takes care of the five wires: three yellow, one red, and one green. But what about the black wire he talks about?

Edit: Or does he mean doubling the single wires from the harness into two?

Edit2: He does indeed mean splitting the red and green wires from the harness side into two wires each, and then locating the main switch power lead which would go to the black wire. Now to find that main switch power lead...

 

Still not sure where to find that black wire on the CBR's harness. It must be one of the two green grounding wires screwed into the bracket, right? But, does that I mean I have to double up one of those and allow it to ground as well as plugging into the R/R? That doesn't seem to make sense...