1-phase to 3 phase upgrade '78 KZ650

I know this has been gone over in quite a few other threads before, (I've read a dozen of them over the last couple days.) but like others before me, I'm looking to get a little more power out of the charging system on my '78 KZ650.
I have a DYNA S, and plan on a little more lighting output if I can manage it, and I do not think I'll get away with it on the current system.

So, after much reading I've 'come up with' the following plan:

- new high performance 3-phase stator from Electrosport, is the uprated replacement for the '80 CSR 3-phase systems, and reputed to increase power over their stock 3-phase stators, so all to the good.
- use my current permanent magnet rotor from the 1-phase system, provided fitment is good. Again, reputed to be fine per others on kzr.

this last bit, I am still on the fence about a little.

- Shindengen 775 Series pass Reg/Rec to manage the 3-phase output

I'm only on the fence about this last bit, as I am not sure I really *need* the series pass reg, but everything I've read seems to suggest that for the modest difference in cost between the SH775 and a traditional shunt regulator the fine control it offers, controlled with lower heat generation, etc..... make it worth the difference.

I know just enough about electronics to be dangerous, so I want to check in with the gurus here and make sure there isn't some massive imcompatability here I am overlooking. Since the 750s and 80/81 650 had a permanent magnet in their 3-phase chargers, I see no reason (aside from maybe a *little* more efficiency) to go on the hunt for a rotor out of a scrap bike?

Thanks much in advance.

I am not claiming to be an expert on this, as there are several here who are much more knowledgeable than I am on this subject.  It is my understanding that the early 1 phase (actually 2 phase but we call them 1 phase) make use of 12 poles and the later 3 phase systems make use of 18 poles.  So IMO mixing them will work but do not expect the output to be equal to using both with 18 poles. 

I do think you would need a 3 phase reg/regulator as opposed to the 1 phase reg/regulator. 

You're right about the 2 vs. 1 phase terminology. I'm kind of going with the flow on this one.

As far as the rotor goes, the only rando part I have laying about it is a 3-phase rotor in my "parts" '77B, but it is the excited field type, and I don't feel like going down that road. At the moment shipping is brutal getting anything into Canada, so my hands are a little tied to what I can scavenge semi-locally.

In a different time, I would probably just transplant the entire charging system out of an '80 CSR or some such, but at the moment (and also thanks to Ebay's newish "integrated international shipping" program, it's *very* hard to find anyone willing to take the time bill you for a reasonable ship cost.... it all just defaults to the Ebay algorithm...)

I would be happy to do some testing with the mismatched parts tho, and provide feedback to anyone else who is interested. Somewhere buried deep in the archives Loudhvx mentions that the Kawasaki 12 and 18 pole rotors are actually surprisingly well matched, and work happily enough with one another... I'd be putting that to the test, I suppose.



 

As I said not the expert, but do know that the excited field system from the 77 B1 will not work without all the parts for it.  I created this table in the past that has the different systems used on the 650s.

On another site they often incorrectly refer to the 1-phase system as a 2-phase.  It comes from the confusion that it has two wires.  But a true 2-phase system would still need at least three wires and often uses four.  True 2-phase systems are very rare and basically don't exist in vehicle charging systems.

When you only have 2 wires, the current carried by the wires can only ever have a single net value at any given moment, so it can only ever have one phase.  

In order to have two phases, you need to have two different currents at the same time.  This requires more than two wires. 



In a single closed loop circuit, the current is the same single value everywhere on that loop. To have two distinct currents, you need two loops, which requires at least three wires (or three connections) coming from the power source.

2-phase systems in industrial applications are often used when one phase has a different purpose than the other phase, and because of that, the power or voltage requirements may be different so the physical wire requirements will be different.  As such they will use 4 wires instead of 3.  Or it could be that the two phases need to be electrically isolated from each other.  None of this would apply to a simple power generation implementation like we have on the Kz.

The 550 FSM refers to it as single-phase. I use 1-phase as shorthand. 



The rotors ( aka flywheels) have 6 north and 6 south poles, so it can work with a 12-pole 1-phase stator or 18-pole 3-phase stator since 6 divides nicely into 12 or 18.

It's been a long time since I had the north and south poles confirmed on a rotor that came on a 1-phase system, so I'm going on memory and previous posts I made.  The only puzzling thing is: why do the rotors from 1-phase systems have a different part number from those of a 3-phase.  It could just be some improvement in the magnets or some other minor change, but I never got to the bottom of that yet.  At any rate, several users confirmed the same rotor works with both types of stators.

Happy to be corrected on the 1-phase/2-phase distinction. So, the system on my bike is true single phase then.

Sorry Lou, didn't mean to quote out of context, but I couldn't find the particular thread you had commented on  in the archives at the time. Suffice it to say that I am hoping even tho using an 18 pole 3 phase rotor/flywheel would be ideal, they aren't readily available and the 12 pole single phase unit should suffice. I think that for the cost of a new, supposedly uprated 3-phase stator, it's worth a go. Others seem to have been satisfied with the results anyway, and I don't plan to ask a whole lot of it. My bike already manages the Dyna without too much drama, but it does require more frequent topping off of the battery than I would like, given lots of in town and short hop riding. Also, it would be really nice to have a little more light output, and I have a halogen  (h4?) headlight unit in a box someplace waiting to be installed. I suspect that it will draw a fair little more than the current incandescent bulb, based solely on rated wattage.

Any experience or thoughts on the series pass regulator vs. shunt in the context of these bikes? It seems to me that running the charging system at full capacity and grounding out excess voltage is a little less elegant, but it clearly does work alright. I am still on the original reg/rec that came on mine, so they at least are proven to be able to handle a few years worth of heat generation..... I wrote the folks at electrosport and they confirmed their matching regulator is a shunt type, so for the money I am disinclined to get it. (Contextually, my Norton just had a Zener to take care of excess voltage, and it worked fine for a long time, but I did end up replacing it with a shunt regulator. The Norton crowd however speaks very highly of the SH775 as an improvement on the original. But.... calling anything that replaces OE Lucas electronics an improvement is not necessarily a high compliment!)

It isn't a *big* difference in cost for the SH775, but if it really isn't worth the spend I could pass and source out a cheap 3-phase reg/rec which I know are reasonably abundant....

No worries. I didn't feel misquoted.  And the "2-phase" misnomer has been around a long time.

The rotor does have 12 poles, but it's better to think of it as 6 north and 6 south, or actually just think of it as having "6 magnets".  I put that in quotes because the physical magnets are actually 3 or 4 sections, each with multiple poles.  But when you have 6 north and 6 south poles, you effectively have 6 functional magnets.

Thinking of the rotor as 6 magnets makes it easier to see why it works with 12-pole stators and 18 pole stators mathematically.

---

I think you've done your homework nicely.  I don't have a strong opinion on whether or not to use a Shindengen series-pass, so I guess you can basically ignore everything below unless you are curious.

I think Nessism has a good deal on actual Shindengen series regs with a harness to boot.  I guess there are some counterfeits to be aware of.

Back when I was designing reg/rec units for the 550, I investigated using a series-pass SCR-based design and the drawback was when every amp was needed, the series-pass design dropped a bit more voltage than the shunt-type SCR-based design.

The shunt-type circuit basically has no regulator involved at all if every amp is needed by the load.  In that case, it just acts as a simple rectifier.  I was working on a battery-less bike so it was a consideration.  It's not something you measure with a meter. You need a scope to really see the difference.  Meters average everything out so differences are harder to see.

I never considered FET's back then either because they were less reliable compared to SCR's.  As a matter of fact, when OEM Kz regulators fail, it's not usually the SCR's that go bad, it's the averaging-circuit that comes out of spec.

But the industry has now been more and more using FET's, so they may have solved the reliability issues.  They can have a very low voltage drop which would be good in a series-pass configuration.

But I think the Shindengen in question uses SCR's in a series configuration.  Maybe they were able to get low-drop SCR's so the voltage drop issue I was seeing has been solved, or that it was simply small enough not to matter.

I just went with what the industry was using at the time.  I figured they've already done all the testing and came up with the most robust solution.  Since OEM reg/recs on Kz's last 30 years, I guess they made some good choices.

Either way, if your bike is keeping up with the Dyna S without too much drama, then you will have enough power such that the Shindengen series-pass should be fine, and could reduce stator temperature.  But I don't think it would be a mistake to use a modern shunt type either.  I would prefer Kawasaki OEM equipment from a ZX or EX etc.  I've been using Ninja 250 and 500 parts that I picked up for $10. So far of the two or so I've used, they have not had a single hiccup.
 

No eBay APP ID and/or Cert ID defined in Kunena configurationThe SH775 is the unit to get.  Buying a used unit off ebay is perfectly fine since they are so robust.  Triumph makes a great, and cheap, adapter harness which mates up to one.  Just be warned that there are a lot of fake SH775's on the market.  Be sure to confirm "SH775" is printed on the top fin before purchase.  Polaris, Sea Doo, Can Am, Harley, Indian, all used the SH775 as OEM on their bikes so there is a decent supply available in the aftermarket.

No eBay APP ID and/or Cert ID defined in Kunena configuration

wrote:

The SH775 is the unit to get.  Buying a used unit off ebay is perfectly fine since they are so robust.  Triumph makes a great, and cheap, adapter harness which mates up to one.  Just be warned that there are a lot of fake SH775's on the market.  Be sure to confirm "SH775" is printed on the top fin before purchase.  Polaris, Sea Doo, Can Am, Harley, Indian, all used the SH775 as OEM on their bikes so there is a decent supply available in the aftermarket.

Ed, would you share the Triumph harness part number or picture. Thanks

No eBay APP ID and/or Cert ID defined in Kunena configuration

wrote:

wrote:

The SH775 is the unit to get.  Buying a used unit off ebay is perfectly fine since they are so robust.  Triumph makes a great, and cheap, adapter harness which mates up to one.  Just be warned that there are a lot of fake SH775's on the market.  Be sure to confirm "SH775" is printed on the top fin before purchase.  Polaris, Sea Doo, Can Am, Harley, Indian, all used the SH775 as OEM on their bikes so there is a decent supply available in the aftermarket.

Ed, would you share the Triumph harness part number or picture. Thanks

Please google "triumph sh775" and the PN and sources will come up.

www.google.com/search?q=triumph+sh775&oq...ceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

This is why I love KZR so much. Incredible depth of knowledge and the enthusiasm to share it.

I will definitely weigh my options, but at the moment, all things considered, I am leaning towards picking up a used genuine Kaw reg/rec from a Ninja 500 as suggested by loudhvx. Principally because I suspect that even with an 'improved' charging system, that between the Dyna and some uprated lighting, the bike may yet be using most of the voltage supplied, leaving little gain to be had sparing the stator the extra work when the whole system is fully charged and idle... 

That said, thanks Nessism for the link. The price on a used unit isn't a whole lot more than a used shunt type.... I had only investigated new (genuine?) ones to date, and they were in the $100 USD neighbourhood, which is getting spendy.

So, as always it seems it's a matter of what you are trying to achieve and willing to spend. I'm pretty curious about the specifics of how the SH775 is built and how much voltage drop there is at maximum demand..... I would hope that for the money, it might come close to the alternatives, but definitely do not have a scope at my disposal to look at the differences. On the topic of the Shindengen unit, I assume that spade connectors will suffice? I'd happily shell out a few dollars for a harness, but failing that....it's connectors and crimping.

This?