Stator Pages revisited

[firstimer850]

First, I have to say this is the best site I have found for the information to fix most of the nagging issues on my 80 GS 850g ever. I bought the bike from a guy at work. It didn't run and looked like it sat in a field for a couple of years. The up side, I payed just $100 for it. The down side, I have almost $1500 invested since then. Wish I new about this site before I got started as it would have saved me a lot of time and money. Thank you for all the helpfull info.

This the first bike I have ever owned and am supprised at how simple, yet complicated it is. I have been at this thing off and on for almost a year now without a book and only the knowledge gleaned from my experience with aircraft maintainance and automobile repair. The quest continues.

Just got done reading all of the stator pages and noticed that one of the three wires(white with two blue stripes) coming from the stator does not go directly to the rectifier. It shoots off to the main wireing harness somewhere under the gas tank. Why? It melted into goo on the way to work last night and now I am looking for the ground. I have had issues with charging on the run since I got it running. I am going to follow your fault chart first thing in the morning and let everyone know how it went.

[Guest]

If you have an on and off switch for the headlight the stator wire goes to the headlight.

[firstimer850]

Thanks for the reply.

There is no on/off switch. Just high/low. It is the one that got real hot. I also had to run a jumper from a switch on the fairing to get the headlight to work. There was no power from the original connector for the headlamp bezel. The headlamp fuse is still good.

[relic-rider]

Ahhhh, the wonderful melted goo connector. Welcome to R/R meltdown zone. The third wire from the stator was originally routed up to the headlight on the earlier models with an on/off switch for the light. When the always on headlight came into being, instead of just connecting the third wire directly to the R/R, they just put a jumper wire in the old connector up front and ran the juice right back. Seems goofy, but they probably saved some money not having to change the harness wiring much.
So now when the R/R goes bad it heats up the wire and connector(along with engine heat) and you have a gooey melted together connector. Has happened on both my 750 and 1000. The R/R was bad in both instances. Do the diode check with a multimeter and I'm sure at least one diode of the 6 are bad. Check the stator output also, to make sure it wasn't fried also. I ended up cutting out the old melted connector and splicing and soldering each connection individually. I bought an Electrosport R/R for each bike. There are others who make them(Ricks), or you can use some Honda R/R's. Do some searching on here. There are plenty of threads discussing this.

[bwringer]

Most people end up simply bypassing the loop up to the headlight. You'll also want to solder the stator connections if you haven't already -- those stupid bullet connectors are totally inadequate.

[SPARKSS]

As others have mentioned, this was routed up to the headlight switch to bring in the 3rd phase AC which was then taken back to the rectifier bridge to boost output when the lights were on. Although I haven't seen one without a headlight switch, what I have seen is a block off cover, put on at the factory over top of a functioning headlight switch. You had to remove the cover to see it and if it does have this setup, when uncovered, it has no proper knob but merely a plain steel actuator sticking up.

[firstimer850]

Stator Pages revisited .01

Thanks again guys. I am on the puter in the shop with the bike right in front of me. Found a second wire from the stator fried as well. Will update all of you when I find the gremlin that stole my spark.