Stator test questions, will I kill my new R/R?

[Macmatic]

I'm installing a Honda R/R that I got from duaneage a few months ago and I've been trying to do the Stator Papers checks before and after. When I was doing the check of voltage on the three legs of the stator I got something like 65v, 70v and then nothing....and then nothing on the first two when I went back and checked. In this case "nothing" is about 12-5v.

This was with the stator wire disconnected from the harness and probing between them with the multimeter set to AC voltage. Its a "better" one from Harbor Freight so I thought maybe it just died on me but it still sees household voltage at 118v. Even if its off it can't be off that much....

So am I missing something simple here? This stage of the test involves disconnecting the three yellow stator wires and then probing between them for AC voltage, right? Thats it? There is continuity between the legs and none between the legs and the block.

Now I got into all this because my battery boiled dry and I just got the new R/R installed but I'm kind of afraid to hook up the stator and see where its charging, I don't want to fry it!

Does the Stator need juice from the battery to start working? Excite the field or somthing? I had shut down the engine, disconnected the stator, restarted and shut down for some reason and then restarted again. I have not connected the stator again and I'm getting minimal readings, maybe 12-5v at 4-5k rpm.


Thanks
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[Billy Ricks]

Looks like you are doing the test correctly and you have a bad leg in the stator. When you do the test for a shorted leg do you have the tester set for voltage or resistance? If your tester has the continuity setting that works fine to to check for breaks or shorts.

The stator doesn't need a power source, it produces AC voltage. Any chance the connector is bad where the stator connects to the harness?

[Billy Ricks]

Okay I just reread your post. So you got good voltage on the first two legs when checking against the other two wires then on the third leg got minimal voltage? Then after going back and checking the other two they were minimal too?

[BassCliff]

Hi Mr. Macmatic,

It's possible that you just have some intermittent connectors on the ends of the stator wires. Are you still using bullet connectors? I replaced mine with blade connectors, crimped and soldered.

There should be a resistance of about 2 ohms or less (but not zero) between the legs and no continuity at all (infinite resistance) between each leg and chassis ground.

I wrote up my stator test procedure and hung it on my website. Have a look and see if it helps.

Stator Test << click me.

Thank you for your indulgence,

BassCliff

[Steve]

Intermittant readings is a good indicator of a broken wire.

No, you will not damage your r/r with your current stator, but you won't be properly charging your battery, either.

No need to "excite the field" as there is no field to excite. The charging system uses permanent magnets (instead of a field) that are part of the flywheel on the crank and they rotate around the stator windings to produce Alternating Current (AC) which is then rectified to Direct Current (DC) and regulated to about 14 volts by your r/r.

.

[Rkt-Rch]

Same boat

I to had issues last year at the end of the season. I noticed one night (yes night) all of a sudden my Low beam blew out, I just put a new one in less than 3-4 months eariler ?? Starting checking my charging system (first checking the batt voltage at idle/2000 or so) and sure enough it was not regulating. Found this 1100 R/R on e-bay one night (LATE) and once it arrived I noticed the size difference ?? Whoops I havent tried it yet but the STATOR papers and electro sport checks will be being done this weekend.

Oh yeah I meant to tell you that I can't tell you how many times I have had my TEST LEADS go bad or are interminent.... Make sure you check them. good luck !!

[Macmatic]

Thanks for all the good ideas. I went back to double check things before I do the running test and here is what I got:

Resistance between yellow wires
HF: .7ohm
Fluke 78 .7ohm

Each wire to engine case and frame ground (tested both)
HF & Fluke: Totally open, no connection.

Billy,

"So you got good voltage on the first two legs when checking against the other two wires then on the third leg got minimal voltage? Then after going back and checking the other two they were minimal too?"

Yep. Thats pretty much it. I got a reading between A&B and A&C but when I checked B&C I seemed to have a low reading and then when I went back to A&B A&C it was also low. Going to try again shortly.

I'll come back and update a little later with the running voltages. I want to take a reading and then hook it all up to the new R/R and see what I see. This charging system boiled the battery but never left me with a dead battery!

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[BassCliff]

Cooking with electrons

Hi,

As the stator heats up it's characteristics can change. If some of the insulation on the wire wraps has gone bad, it may not start shorting out until heat and vibration causes stuff to move around a little bit. Once you look at the stator, all may become clear.




Thank you for your indulgence,

BassCliff

[Macmatic]

Well I'm still not up and running! It got too late to be revving the bike out in the garage so I've pretty much finished up wiring in the new Honda R/R. I also found that the ground lead coming off the main Negative cable near the battery had a 15ohm resistance when checking to the the two sides of the connector.

I haven't found the actual problem yet but I found that if I grounded the B/W wire that went to the OEM R/R I got a good solid ground again with about .2ohm resistance. So for the moment I've got a workaround and once I find the actual problem I can use the same wire as a ground to the new R/R case.

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[BassCliff]

Hi,

Have you had a chance to clean every electrical connection and ground on the entire bike? The big ground wire from the negative battery terminal to the rear of the engine needs to be taken loose, scrubbed with a wire brush (both the cable connections and the areas where it bolts to the battery and engine) and cleaned with a contact cleaner or similar. Run the ground wire from your r/r directly to the negative terminal of the battery. Take all of the bullet connectors apart, clean them, and reinsert them snugly so that they are making good connections. You should also use some dielectric grease on the connections to keep water and corrosion out.

Corrosion adds resistance. Resistance in the wiring harness is not a good thing. It causes heat and voltage loss.

Thank you for your indulgence,

BassCliff

[Macmatic]

Thanks Cliff. All of my grounds get an annual check and this is the first problem I've found since building the bike. Battery to engine, batt to frame, engine to frame, various ground points to batt have all been about .2ohm until now. Something went wonky in the main harness and I don't want to try sorting that out until I get the charging system back up and get in a few hundred miles at least. Its too nice out to be working on the bike instead of riding!

For now I've jumpered to ground on the other side of the problem and checked all points that had a high (15ohm) resistance, now all back to about .2ohm. The R/R is grounded to the same point on the frame I have my coil relay mod grounded to but at some point after I move I'm going to make up a new negative lead with several more pigtails.... the + and - lugs are getting crowded.

Charging update this afternoon.

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[Macmatic]

Well it looks like its stator time! I hooked everything up again and was getting no charge to the battery. It would flicker up about half a volt when I revved it but that was all. I'm going to check the wiring twice more tomorrow but given the lack of output I read from the stator this is about what I expected.

Will the R/R take out the stator? The bike had been overcharging... I found out when it started funny and I found the battery dry! If I'm really lucky the spare motor under the bench has a good one installed!

Thanks for all the tips and Cliff's foreshadowing with the pic.

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[Macmatic]

So.... whats the problem?

The stator has about .4ohm conductivity between each yellow wire.
No yellow wire has any conductivity to ground/engine case.
No output above 13volts spike, about 9-10v range normally.

I'm trying to learn pick up a lot of wiring/electrics knowledge lately but I'm not getting why the stator isn't putting out if the first two above are true.

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[Billy Ricks]

Insulation may be gone and not showing up in your static readings. Once the motor runs windings may be shorting because the enamel has burned off. You'll probably find some crusty looking spots on the windings when you pull it out. If you need a stator check out the RM stators on Ebay. I think I got mine for about $100. They claim to have higher output than stock and the insulation on them looks like it will hold up better than OEM.

[Macmatic]

Oh right, I didn't even think about it turning at a few thousand RPMs. Maybe I'll check resistance between the legs while its running. I've got a used stator on the way from Dad's Parts Storage, LLC in NY which also tests good static so I'll see what it looks like when it gets here.

Thanks again.
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