I wanted to post this link for others in the same situation. I bought 2 GS's at a yard sale last year a 1978 gs400x and a 1980 gs1000gl boh bikes had bee sitting under a tarp behind there house for at least 6 years. I only Paid $700 for both. Both suffered from same problems typical of GS's sitting that long. After rebuilding the carbs on both bikes they started right up and run great but the charging systems were bad.
While it was very easy to obtain a stater and rectifier for the 1000 it is almost imposible for the 400. The 400 is similar to the 750's of that era and has a seperate rectifier and regulator. After searching e-bay for a few weeks with no luck for a rectifier I noticed that there was guy who built them for older Hondas his name is Tony Weeks. I contacted and asked him if could build me one with 5 wires. He told me that this was something he had already been cosidering and agreed to do it. After e-mailing him a wiring digram and a couple of pictures he built and mailed one to me in less than a week! Better still he only charged me $25 plus shipping!
The rectifier works great! much better than I could have hoped. I get 12.5 volts at idle and 13.4 at 4500 rpm and it never gets above 14.5 even at 8000rpm. This is better than my 1000 with a new Electrex stator and regulator/rectifier. Tony now is selling these on e-bay for hondas but they work on older GS's too. Here is the link to e-bay and his username is technogearhead when this link becomes stale.
I hope this helps.
Anthony
While it was very easy to obtain a stater and rectifier for the 1000 it is almost imposible for the 400. The 400 is similar to the 750's of that era and has a seperate rectifier and regulator. After searching e-bay for a few weeks with no luck for a rectifier I noticed that there was guy who built them for older Hondas his name is Tony Weeks. I contacted and asked him if could build me one with 5 wires. He told me that this was something he had already been cosidering and agreed to do it. After e-mailing him a wiring digram and a couple of pictures he built and mailed one to me in less than a week! Better still he only charged me $25 plus shipping!
The rectifier works great! much better than I could have hoped. I get 12.5 volts at idle and 13.4 at 4500 rpm and it never gets above 14.5 even at 8000rpm. This is better than my 1000 with a new Electrex stator and regulator/rectifier. Tony now is selling these on e-bay for hondas but they work on older GS's too. Here is the link to e-bay and his username is technogearhead when this link becomes stale.
I hope this helps.
Anthony