81 550lx eating stators

[whiterabbitt]

I know that stators have been covered to death, but I haven't been able to find anything like my problem with search. Yes I am familiar with the stator papers and this is the third gs I have brought back to life. I am fairly certain that the stator had been replaced sometime before I bought it, nine years after it was parked with an electrical issue.

In the past 8 months I have had to put 3 new stators in my 81 550 LX. The first time seemed pretty routine and everything worked great, for 2 months. Then it quit, I chocked it up to a faulty stator . The second went good for a couple months and then my r/r gave up, melting all the leads from it together along with my fuse block, I assume this short caused that stator to fail. I replaced the r/r with a duanage unit pirated off one of my 750's, ran inline fuses and a new stator. That lasted a couple months and then failed. So I snagged the stator out of a 750 that tested good and put it in. I fired the bike and it failed in seconds, before I could even turn on the multimeter that was already hooked up to run tests. I have been over the wiring and connectors repeatedly, cleaning or replacing anything that was questionable, short of shredding the harness.

Any ideas?

I dont want to install another new stator and have the same problems. Just for good measure I bought a caltric r/r along with the new stator but I don't want to install anything until I get a little feedback.

[posplayr]

Read GS stator in my signature. Everything you seek is freely avaliable.

[tom203]

Did you bypass the stator loop that went to headlight switch and connect all 3 stator wires direct to R/R ? Sounds like you got a short,maybe misconnected wiring or stator wires grounding out in housing or along path to R/R. Recently a guy in my area failed to reinstall stator wires inside housing properly and he had poor charging after a few hours. You need to double check this stuff before firing up bike.
Do some reading at that posplayr link- note info regarding series R/R, cuz you want one.If you need a new stator (sounds likely but maybe not) ,send PM to member Steve- he fronts for a guy that rewinds them in the USA and usually has units in stock .

[Guest]

I can think of a scenario with each repair you made that was caused by either a bad R/R, stator or a wiring system that was never cleaned up. These bikes do not eat stators unless there is something wrong with one of the three things I mentioned. First step is to clean up all electrical connections on the bike and replace as necessary. This includes bullet connectors, plugs, switches, grounds, and fuse boxes. All contacts points in these components cleaned with a good contact cleaner and coated with dielectric grease. Now you have a wiring system that is not going to contribute to failures due to high contact resistances that have a detrimental cumulative effect. Replace your stator with one newly rewound so you know it is good. Replace your R/R with a SERIES R/R. Old stators are difficult to positively test for being good. You put a used R/R and stators into the mix. All the old design Shunt R/R's can fail quickly and cause damage if the right conditions exist. There is tons of information on this site on this subject. You couldn't have researched it very well, and I know your repair methods with used components could easily have been flawed. You will get the help you need if you start doing the necessary steps and report your progress.

[Nessism]

SH-775 R/R and fix the wiring. There are thousands of posts here expounding on these details.