Headlight causing electrical problems?

Bill, here is conversation with Rick:

I finally got a call back from Rick of Rick's Motorsport Electrics (the ones who rewound stator #4).

I took notes as best as I could, but he didn't have a lot of patience with being slowed down, and i didn't want to lose him.

He said he's never seen a rotor that has been demagnetized from being dropped or damaged that didn't have cracks in it, and said having put three rotors on my bike, none having cracks or chips, I could be confident that the rotor was not the problem.

He said the resistance test was an indication of stator performance, but you determined whether a stator was good, or not, with a ground fault test, running one probe of the meter to one of the output wires, and the other probe to one of the steel lamination stacks. An infinity reading indicates a good stator. You repeat that on each output wire, and must get an infinity reading on all of them.

He said he found it strange that my three phase stator shows higher resistance than what the Clymer manual calls for but puts out 126% of what the manual call for (63 VAC when it calls for 50 VAC). He said normally, the higher the resistance, the lower the output, and in my case, with resistance that is a higher than the upper parameter of what the Clymer manual calls for, I should see stator output that is lower than what the manual calls for. He said I should recheck those specifications and my readings.

He said the VDC rising to 13.6, then dropping to 13.3, then climbing to 13.6, then dropping to 13.3, etc., is definitely the RR working. The single phase RR on the bike that was doing that is one I bought from Z1 Enterprises, and he said he is the supplier of those, so he knows for sure that the set point on the RR is 14.5-14.8 VDC, and it should not be shorting to ground before that.

However, since we switched the whole charging system over to another, three-phase system, and the stator on that three-phase charging system appears to be putting out more than spec, and that bike is alsoo topping out at 13.6 VDC and dropping back to 13.3 VDC before repeating the cycle, it is reasonable to assume the problem is not the RR. To completely rule that out, he said I need to do a charging system isolation test.

To do that, he said you disconnect the stator from the battery.

You then take another, fully-charged motorcycle battery that you know is good, run the red/white wire from the RR to the outboard battery positive on the alternate battery, and run the black wire from the RR to the outboard battery negative on the alternate battery.

The bike will run on it's own battery, but the charging system will charge to the alternate battery, effectively isolating the RR from being affected by any battery or wiring problems or load restrictions downstream on the bike.

He said the bike should now charge to 14.5-14.8 VDC, then drop back to no less than 13.5 VDC when the RR shorts to ground, then climb back to 14.5-14.6 VDC, etc. If it does not do that, then the problem lies in the RR. If it does do that, then the charging system can be ruled out as the problem.

A couple of things I'm not clear on:

He didn't address the brown wire on the three-phase charging system, and I didn't think to ask him till we were off the phone.

As I understand it, if the brown wire is not hooked up, the RR will not short to ground. Would simply hooking the brown wire up to the positive battery terminal be sufficient?

Second, he was very specific about "outboard battery positive", and "outboard battery negative", correcting me each time I said "positie", or "negative". Am I missing something, or is he just being very specific?

Third, he said to use a motorcycle battery as the alternate battery. Is there any reason you couldn't use a good, fully-charged automotive battery for this test? I'm just thinking some schlub trying to figure out what is wrong with his bike probably doesn't have another motorcycle battery laying around, but car bateries are pretty easy to come by. I didn't think to ask Rick till we were off the phone.

Well thanks for sharing that. I for one had not heard of that approach... sounds interesting.

Of course since I have a bike with a different charging system I have no real answers to your questions.

However, I believe you are correct when you guess that he is being very specific about Positive and Negative versus Outboard Positive and Outboard Negative. Good thing you caught that difference.

I would guess that the Car battery should run the bike only while the Motorcycle battery should be connected to the charging system only.

Do you plan to do this test? Sounds as if you have the procedure you need to prove out your Regulator/Rectifier combo module. Let us know what your conclusions are.

Best of success,
Bill

PS
Have you thought of calling him back and saying your are ready to test but you forgot to ask about the Brown wire? It's worth a shot.
Bill