WG coil wiring mod blowing out regulators?

13.5v at 4000 rpms should be good enough. You've replaced the battery I assume? My plug between the stator and reg/rect burned a while back so I just wired direct and was only getting like 12.9v @ 4000 rpms, but that was because the battery was discharged. After charging back up, back to 14.5v, but at idle you're not going to charge. I only get 12.5v or so there.

RonKZ650 wrote:

13.5v at 4000 rpms should be good enough. You've replaced the battery I assume? My plug between the stator and reg/rect burned a while back so I just wired direct and was only getting like 12.9v @ 4000 rpms, but that was because the battery was discharged. After charging back up, back to 14.5v, but at idle you're not going to charge. I only get 12.5v or so there.

It's a new battery, and fully charged. It's been tested with a hydrometer; it is good.

Most of my riding is on city streets, and at lower rpms as I hypermile the bike. I also shut it off at stoplights and drive-throughs, etc. Several times, the battery has been drained down to the point where I'm stomping on the kickstarter at intersections. The problem is, the headlight operates constantly, and pulls more juice than the charging system supplies during sustained low rpm operation, to the point where 30 seconds shut off at a traffic light drains the battery to the point where it won't operate the starter.

There is also no question that the regulators are bad. This is born out by the ohm meter tests I outlined earlier. Something is causing it.

Is it absolutely necessary to have the headlight on all the time,I ask because I don't know what your local laws are.
You mentioned previously that when you tried taking the wgmod out, it ran like crap, out of curiosity,what condition is the wiring in in general?

When I went to look at the bike before buying it a little over a year ago, the owner jumped it off from a running truck. This blew out every light bulb on the bike, and regulator #1 (also, apparently, the stator).

Jumped it from a running vehicle and blew the reg/rec. No mystery there.

We got regulator #2 from a local motorcycle salvage yard. It tested good prior to installation. It was good for about 500 miles.

Thirty year old reg/rec with unknown hours of use blows up after 500 additional miles. You expect me to get excited???

When it blew out, we took regulator #3 off of JCCWall's parts bike. We did not test it before putting it on the bike. There was no improvement, so we tested both regulators and got the results described above.

Ok, so you remove a bad rec/reg and replace it with one you didn't even bother checking, and you want to make a big production out of it because it's bad???


Edit to remove my opinion as posted.

It was flammable.

steell wrote:

When I went to look at the bike before buying it a little over a year ago, the owner jumped it off from a running truck. This blew out every light bulb on the bike, and regulator #1 (also, apparently, the stator).

Jumped it from a running vehicle and blew the reg/rec. No mystery there.

We got regulator #2 from a local motorcycle salvage yard. It tested good prior to installation. It was good for about 500 miles.

Thirty year old reg/rec with unknown hours of use blows up after 500 additional miles. You expect me to get excited???

When it blew out, we took regulator #3 off of JCCWall's parts bike. We did not test it before putting it on the bike. There was no improvement, so we tested both regulators and got the results described above.

Ok, so you remove a bad rec/reg and replace it with one you didn't even bother checking, and you want to make a big production out of it because it's bad???


Edit to remove my opinion as posted.

It was flammable.

Dude, what's your problem?

Reading is fundamental. 500 miles, not hours. And the bike developed charging problems well before it was pulled off and retested at 500 miles.

And we didn't run the Clymer tests on #3 because the bike we took it off of was charging properly.

Let me point out that three regulators dying on their own within 500 miles is statistically unlikely, even if they are 30 years old, especially when all three show the exact same test results. The probability of a common cause is much more likely.

The possibility that the jumping off from the running truck causing damage which wiped out the first regulator, and has continued to wipe out each requlator which was subsequently installed is a reasonable one.

And what part of wanting to understand a problem and test for possible root causes before risking a 100.00+ part when there is a history of not one, not two, but three of those parts failing in an identical manner over a very short period of time is "making a big production out of it"?

Let's say you hand someone a ball peen hammer, and they smash you in the face with it.

The next day, you hand them another ball peen hammer, and they smash you in the face with it.

The next day, you hand them yet another ball peen hammer, and they smash you in the face with it.

At what point do you stop handing them ball peen hammers, and try to figure out why they're smashing you in the face with it?

I don't know what burr you've got in your saddle, but I came here asking for help, not drama. I don't want you to "get excited" about anything. I'm having a problem with my bike. I have been unable to resolve it, so I came here to ask for help from people who know much more about motorcycle electrical systems and these bikes than I do. If you don't want to help, that's fine, but I'd appreciate your taking your histionics and flames elsewhere.

Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought this kind of juvenile behavior wasn't accepted on this forum. I'd think that would go double for a moderator.

You've been helpful to me in the past, and I thank you for that, but I don't need this grief.

So, I'm to take it that you're not trolling and you're actually serious? :ohmy:

One thing though, although I may indeed be guilty of juvenile behaviour (and I often am), I am not a Moderator.

You know those three yellow wires that connect the stator to the reg/rec? They carry AC current and voltage to the reg/rec, but the bike won't work real well on AC, so the first thing that happens is the AC gets converted to DC by six diodes in a full wave bridge configuration as it enters the rec (rectifier) part of the reg/rec.

The test you performed measures the forward and reverse resistance of the diodes, and that's about all you can measure on a sealed reg/rec. Now, assuming that when you said you had a 0 reading you meant and infinity reading (as in open circuit), and not a 0 as in less than 1 ohm resistance, then that means three diodes are blown.

Disregard the first reg/rec that the previous owner blew, that one's toast because he jump started the bike from a running truck. The day that you jumpstart a KZ from a running car/truck and don't blow the reg/rec, that's when you immediately buy lottery tickets because that's your lucky day. 99 times out of a hundred you'll blow the reg/rec.


Number three reg/rec that you said came from a parts bike, that you later said was a running parts bike with a properly operating charging system. Sorry dude, I don't buy that.

How do you know the charging system was operating correctly if you didn't check it? Or are you saying that it came off a parts bike that was ridden daily?

steell wrote:

So, I'm to take it that you're not trolling and you're actually serious? :ohmy:

One thing though, although I may indeed be guilty of juvenile behaviour (and I often am), I am not a Moderator.

Here's a thought..... maybe it shouldn't say "Moderator" right underneath your cute little avatar on every post you make. That could tend to lead people to mistakenly believe you actually are a moderator, not just claiming to be one.

steell wrote:

You know those three yellow wires that connect the stator to the reg/rec? They carry AC current and voltage to the reg/rec, but the bike won't work real well on AC, so the first thing that happens is the AC gets converted to DC by six diodes in a full wave bridge configuration as it enters the rec (rectifier) part of the reg/rec.

The test you performed measures the forward and reverse resistance of the diodes, and that's about all you can measure on a sealed reg/rec. Now, assuming that when you said you had a 0 reading you meant and infinity reading (as in open circuit), and not a 0 as in less than 1 ohm resistance, then that means three diodes are blown.

It's an infinity reading.

steell wrote:

Disregard the first reg/rec that the previous owner blew, that one's toast because he jump started the bike from a running truck. The day that you jumpstart a KZ from a running car/truck and don't blow the reg/rec, that's when you immediately buy lottery tickets because that's your lucky day. 99 times out of a hundred you'll blow the reg/rec.

Fair enough. As I said earlier, chalk the first regulator up to the running truck jump start. That means Regulator #2, which tested to spec before being installed, died within 500 miles. It actually died much sooner, as the battery began running down shortly after it was put back on the road. We first misdiagnosed it as a bad battery and got a new one. Within a week, it was also running down, and we looked for bad grounds, etc. for another couple of weeks while I continued to ride it before testing the regulator and learning it was blown out. All told, about 500 miles, but that regulator probably got popped right away, as it began having charging issues within a few days of the regulator being put on the bike.

It also means regulator #3, which came off a bike that was charging, was immediately popped after installation, as it was tested after just having idled around the shop for a few minutes.

So, both of those regulators developed the exact same problem within a short time of being installed on the bike, which was, coincidentally, the exact same thing that happened to regulator #1.

Going back to our ball peen hammer, you tell me; if you hand someone a ball peen hammer, and they smash you in the face with it, and you hand them another ball peen hammer, and they smash you in the face with it, and you hand them another ball peen hammer, and they smash you in the face with it, does it make more sense to hand them a brand new ball peen hammer, or might you be better off trying to figure out why they're smashing you in the face before you hand them a fourth ball peen hammer?


steell wrote:

Number three reg/rec that you said came from a parts bike, that you later said was a running parts bike with a properly operating charging system. Sorry dude, I don't buy that.

Who the hell are you to call me a liar? Step the **** off

steell wrote:

How do you know the charging system was operating correctly if you didn't check it? Or are you saying that it came off a parts bike that was ridden daily?

Certainly not for you, but for anyone else who might actually be thinking of helping, it was a running bike with tweaked forks, a bent front wheel, a bad rear tire, no chain, worn out sprockets, a ripped-up seat, dented tank and no title. In my mind, any bike bought to cannibalize for parts is a "parts bike".

That parts bike did, however, start right up on the electric starter when we went to look at it, start right up on the electric starter when we went to pick it up, and start right up on the electric starter in the shop every time we tried it over the next several weeks, lending credence to the owner's claim that he'd started the bike up and let it run for a few minutes a couple of times a week since he'd wrecked it, and also lending credence to the assumption that the charging system must be working properly if that was keeping the battery charged up, when 30 seconds at a traffic light with the headlight energized on my daily-ridden bike was enough to run my brand new battery down.

Despite the fact that your description of the operation of the regulator/rectifier was actually quite helpful, as it improved my understanding of how it works, and defined the problem for me, the facetiousness of it was not lost on me, especially after your inference that I am a liar.

The issue at hand is now defined: what is it that is causing those three diodes in the regulator to blow?

Thank you for helping me define that, but I would appreciate your not participating in this thread anymore. I don't know what's gotten into you, nor do I care. I just know I don't come here to deal with asinine behavior such as what you've chosen to exhibit.

Good luck to you.

Ok, but look at your own info before saying that I'm claiming something I'm not.



seanof30306 (User)
Moderator
Posts: 219


That's what it says on my screen, does it say something different on yours?

If you'll look, every post after the one made by KZCSI says Moderator under it. KZCSI is a actual Moderator, not me, must be a bug in the forum software that's causing it.

Anyone that's been here awhile (including KZCSI) knows that I do not claim to be a Moderator, or to have any influence with the Moderators.

I'm going to do exactly as you request, and not post in this thread again, but I'll leave you with this parting thought.

You tell me what it's called when you state something as fact when it isn't.

This is funny, I originally thought you were being a troll because the answer is so blindingly obvious

steell wrote:

Ok, but look at your own info before saying that I'm claiming something I'm not.



seanof30306 (User)
Moderator
Posts: 219


That's what it says on my screen, does it say something different on yours?

If you'll look, every post after the one made by KZCSI says Moderator under it. KZCSI is a actual Moderator, not me, must be a bug in the forum software that's causing it.

Anyone that's been here awhile (including KZCSI) knows that I do not claim to be a Moderator, or to have any influence with the Moderators.

I'm going to do exactly as you request, and not post in this thread again, but I'll leave you with this parting thought.

You tell me what it's called when you state something as fact when it isn't.

This is funny, I originally thought you were being a troll because the answer is so blindingly obvious

You tell me what it's called when you shoot your mouth off and insult people when you don't know what you're talking about.

Now, clearly, you're (mentally) stamping your foot like a recalcitrant two year old and insisting on having the last word. You've said stupid things, and since you don't have the maturity to admit it when you're wrong and apologize, you're sticking to your guns and continuing the behavior because if you don't, you fear everyone will see exactly what you were doing in the first place.

This thread is about an electrical problem on my motorcycle, not some pissing match between an adult and a mental middle schooler. Your childish crap and narcissistic drama are completely counter-productive, and have no place in this discussion. What you need to do is move on and let me get back to the business of trying to get some help in finding out how to fix my bike.

What I'll again do is wish you good luck, and hope that'll be the end of it.

I don't have a lot of confidence in that, though, as you're clearly spoiling for a fight, and cannot stand not to have the last word. My money is on your coming back with more snide comments.

Please, prove me wrong.

Could the problem be with the way you are riding the bike? Let me explain my reasoning. I have a KZ1000ST which is wired as I understand yours is, with the headlight permanently on when the ignition is on. When fully charged I could use the bike for short local runs for three days before the battery became discharged to the point where the electric starter would not turn the engine over. I got around this by putting the bike on trickle charge every night.

Can I suggest a few things?

1. That you leave the engine running at stop lights and intersections, perhaps even keep the revs up a bit when stopped (1500 to 2000 revs).

2. When riding slowly try not to ride at low revs, but keep to between 3000 to 4000 revs when riding slowly.

3. Buy a trickle charger and plug it in every night.

Just a few thoughts. Don't know if it will help at all.

Good luck.

Paul

Paul, You are interrupting a perfectly good whining session with this technical stuff! FWIW: I have a 79 KZ1000E1 ST as well and installed a KuryAkyn voltage gauge. You can see this gauge on the US eBay; plug in auction # 350095734514 - This gauge gives you an easy to read indication of how the charging system is working. FWIW: I don't have problems with the battery discharging when riding in town or in stop and go traffic. I think it is a good idea to monitor the DC voltage output to check to see how the bike is charging. The battery charges when the positive voltage is a bit greater than 12 volts and charges best at about 13.5 to 14.5 volts. With fuel prices what they are, it is cheaper to have a good performing charging system than sit at traffic lights revving the engine. You will also not need to keep the bike on a trickle charger if your charging system is up to snuff. The ST had a more effective stator than earlier KZ models so I would start by checking AC voltage using a meter on each of the three wires... check between each pair of wires and you should get 40 VAC at idle and 60-70 at 4K rpm.

Well now that the toys are all over the floor:silly: could someone explain this term "troll"?
No I'm not retarded,just hopelessly absent wr tut internets 'n' thingsB) :woohoo: