Intruders-Alert

Last fall I started having trouble with my 99 charging system, if I ran with the headlight on it would slowly drain the battery. I figured the stator was going out.

Well, it is starting to warm up here, finally, so I decided to t shoot it and fix it. When I changed the first stator the plug was cooked so I had just spliced the wires to the bike, the replacement engine had a good stator so I did the same when I installed it I did the same.

When I got under the seat and started the bike it was charging at just under 13 vdc. The stater wires were getting hot. I cut the splices out and they had a bunch of corrosion on them. Tested the stator and it tested good so I put new splices on them. It is now charging 14 vdc, even with the headlight on.

I had it out a few times over the winter but where I live I can do a lot of riding with the light off so it wasn't a big deal but it was time to fix it...

Good wiring is good!

Ride on!

TheNicestPeople wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 14, 2023 8:03 pm

Good wiring is good!

Ride on!

I will do a lot more as soon as I get the place cleande up from the winter.

Funny story.

Before I fixed the stator wires I was t-shooting the system and mounted an auto voltmeter to the handlebars so I could track what was happening while riding. After I fixed the stator wires I left it on for a little while. I started getting really strange readings. The gauge would drop off as rpms increased, sometimes it would drop below 12 volts with no reason. I was starting to think that the regulator was bad.

When I installed the gauge I cross checked it with a multimeter hooked up to the battery. I was working on it the other day and hooked up the multimeter to the battery and compared it to the gauge. The gauge was showing strange readings and the multimeter showed 14-14.5 volts. I spent a lot of time checking connections and worrying about getting stranded when the issue was my gauge had went bad.

The gauge is now in the trash...

I am still a little concerned about the charging system. The wiring and everything but the stator are 24 years old and have well over 240K miles on them. Since the bike has no way to know if there is a problem until it quits, I am going to find a gauge to be able to keep an eye on the voltage.

Another thing to consider is where you wire in the meter. On my 1500 I initially had the meter wired in directly to the driving lights wiring. It fluctuated quite a lot with varying revs but especially when I turned on the driving lights - it dropped down to under 10v at times.

I ended up wiring it directly off the battery via a relay so I was reading the voltage at the battery. Far more stable and a truer reflection of charging health.