Charging System Issues

The charging system on the 1100 is giving me some issues. Went for about a 50 mile ride, stopped for a while and when I went to restart the bike for the return trip I had to pop-start it. (Quite embarrassing in a parking lot full of people, I think the bike was angry that I stopped along the way to look at a ZRx1200R for a possible replacement)

ANYWAY....Did I little bit of diagnostic tinkering with the bike. It seems as though with the stator plug disconnected from the rest of the harness I'm only seeing 10-18 volts across any two of the yellow leads. and about 20-30 volts across any two at about 4k RPM.

ALSO...with everything connected as normal the three yellow leads seemed alarming warm. The insulation wasn't melting or anything but I Mean they were to the touch. In addition to all of that I'm getting a low resistance (continuity) between any of the three yellow stator leads and ground. This is indicative of a bad stator correct?

Lastly....with everything hooked up I'm reading only about 12 to 12.4 volts even at the battery at idle and slightly higher around 4k RPM.

The battery was kind of iffy to begin with as it was pretty old (came with the bike), so I went and grabbed a new battery this morning. (It was a sealed AGM pre-charged type, and read 12.59 volts out of the box.)

So what do yall think? Stator? Maybe REG/REC unit? Cleaned and Dielectric greased all the connectors, had not noticeable affect. If it is the stator do they just go bad over time or is more root cause analysis required here? Any input/help/comments VERY appreciated, I don't really wanna just start throwing parts at the bike when the parts are 100 or more bucks a piece.

Thanks,
Dave
(Sorry this was so long, just wanted to cover all the bases)

Start by inspecting all the yellow wires from the reg/rec to the stator. Hopefully the short will be in the wiring instead of the stator.

And yes, when the yellow wires are disconnected from the reg/rec, they should have no continuity to ground.

Many times I've seen dielectric grease on a connector, it was the cause of a connection problem. The grease can act like an insulator between the contacts. I never use it.

Post edited by: loudhvx, at: 2007/07/27 16:32

That's good to know about the die electric grease, I had never head that before, but I guess it does makes sense. Also I forgot to mention, I tested for continuity to ground between the yellow stator leads and ground right where they come out of the case at those three little connectors. (I wanted to be really sure)

--Dave