This project I'm documenting is currently in progress. I couldnt find a write up on it anywhere so I'm making one to hopefully help someone else or to at least peak your interest.

I couldn't find a new stator, do not want to pay $400+ to have someone else do it, and have seen quite a few people needing this 'needle-in-the-haystack' part. A little background on my issue: I was riding to work one day, after finally getting my sync tool and sync'ing the carbs, when out of nowhere the bike shuts off. I start it under compression while I still gliding and manage to make the turn in the road and the bike cuts off again. Hit the engine start and not a thing happens. Hit the horn and...nothing. I have a micro jump start kit so I throw the leads on, start it, and as soon as I take them off it dies. Gotta love it. Late for work and pushing a 600lb sexy beast.
After work I push it to my garage and check the battery. Reads 8V...so I throw it on the charger and start probing 6p connectors. R/R reads fine so I move on to the alternator and find a short. All yellow wires show continuity, ****. So here I am.

I pulled off the alternator cap and brought her home to check it out. Turns out they don't really want you messing with these as there's no real way to pull out the stator to check it out without cutting the three leads all the way inside(yellow wires.) There's a short somewhere so I just cut them and remove it. I checked the yellow wires from the 6p connector to the leads inside the case and find no continuity. I guess I can't be that lucky.

Here is the stator. The three wires shown are the wires that connect to the yellow wires. On the left side, the other ends of these leads are soldered together and covered.
So I started trying to trace and track the wires/coils. I wrote it down but have since came back inside and left the paper in the workshop. I'll add it here shortly. It's fairly straightforward.

In this photo, all but one coil is removed. You can see how the coils are laid out.
I stripped the whole stator and cleaned it off really well. I couldn't find any obvious shorts; However, the copper wires were only coated where they left the stator on the top and bottom. So If they moved at all its possible for the bare copper to touch and short. I will be using enamel coated copper transformer wire to rewrap this sucker. This should solve that issue.

There are a few issues I have to address that I will show pictures of. Knicks, dings, and some exposed metal that will all need to be remedied.
​​ All cleaned up. You can see tone of the issues on the right.
The knicks from the previous photo.
Some missing insulation.
Hmm, not too sure what happened here but I plan on persuading that lifted piece to lay flat. Not sure if that's important or not but while I have it apart I might as well make everything pretty.

​That's all for tonight. I'll be ordering the wire shortly and will work on posting an easy to read table or image of how the coils are wound. Thanks for reading.

 

Thanks for this. I look forward to the next installment.

 

I also have considered this, but have never done a 'rewiring' project like this. I was lucky enough to find a good used stator when mine went bad. How did you remove the wires? Cut them, then unwrap? Looking forward to following along. Good luck!

 

When you remove the stator you have to either desolder or cut the leads on the inside bottom of the cover (the leads connect to the three yellow wires coming from the alternator cover.) Once that's disconnected, those three leads are one end of each coil. After removing the little insulator pieces that hold the wires inside each "tooth" I picked the coil that was 'on top' and started unwinding. I made sure to count the wraps, mark the locations of and spaces between wraps, and then carefully unwound it. One end of each coil is soldered together and the other end connects to the yellow wires. I only did it this way to get the correct configuration for when I reassemble. If you already know the configuration, the quickest way would be to cut the loops off of each end.
I'm still trying to figure out the best way to illustrate the configuration of the coils on here. There are so many different names for the types of coil windings and I don't completely understand the explanations of each (frog leg, concentrated, distributed, etc...) Most of the info I found came from educational research and electrical engineering papers, so it's a bit high level language for my understanding. This is one of the main reasons I made a real effort to examine the orientation while I was unwinding the shorted stator. As long as I replicate the old one and everything tests correctly, I'll be good to go.

 

Also, a correction: Upon closer inspection, the wires of the old coil were actually enamel coated. Not really sure what caused it to short out in the first place.