Regulator/Rectifier - Yellow wire question

The old R/R on my bike was acting up (was peaking over 19V, frying my poor battery), so I ordered another SH530-12 R/R on ebay. Unfortunately, the one from ebay had a male connector, and my 82 GPZ needs female connectors. I ended up clipping the wires on the ebay unit and reconnecting them to their respective wires on my old R/R near the harness. Unfortunately, I was not paying attention to which yellow wire attached to which yellow wire.

I went to start up the bike with the new rectifier, and everything started. I disconnected the battery posts from the battery to check the output from the new R/R on those posts, and it is only putting out about 7 volts, and the engine was running poorly.

Question: Does the order of the yellow wires matter, or does this point to a bad R/R unit?

If your bike has the three phase system, it does not matter as which wires(Yellow) goes where as they are 120 degrees apart.

It could be that your old R/R was still good. The overcharging may be from low voltage on the Brown Voltage sense wire. This wire is where the R/R senses the need for charging, and can have a voltage drop through your electrical system. It is switched through the Ignition, but comes off of the Main fuse circuit. You may find that the voltage here on the brown wire is lower than the voltage across the battery terminals. So then the R/R makes up the difference as it thinks the battery is low.
You can check the voltage along the circuit, and rectify any voltage drop. Also a quick test is to remove the brown wire from the 6 terminal connector, and apply the brown to the positive battery post directly. This is the R/R side. Then it can see the battery voltage truly. Measure the output across the posts as before and see if it is 14V or so.

The shop I use checked the brown wire, and it was showing a charge. Their conclusion was that the R/R was the problem. I didn't believe them, so I double checked the wire. They were right.

Now I'm wondering if I should drop another $50 on the bike and get a proper, used 1982 GPZ750 R/R that is returnable. Or maybe I just sell the bike as is. This electrical issue is driving me nuts.

The Brown wire is not the charging output wire. the red/ white is. the brown is for voltage sense, and is switched on by the ignition. Like I said, if this wire once switched has a lower voltage than the battery, then the R/R will compensate and put out more voltage on the red/white wire. This red/ white goes directly back tot he battery, causing a over charge and boiling of the battery.

Yep. The brown wire was showing within 1 volt of the battery output. The R/R was showing over 19 volts at 4k RPM rather than the 14.5V that the manual tells me.