frosty5011
Forum Mentor
GS850 that I sold last summer.....had a used Honda R/R installed on it last year when the Electrex went toast on it. Owner (friend of mine) brought it over to me today, asked if I could help him, his battery appears to be not charging correctly.
Hooked up the voltmeter (with good battery in it!!8-[ ) to the bike's battery. It will hardly go up to 12.6V when revved up to the 5k mark. By coincidence, I decided to try with high beam on, and saw to my surprise the high beam did not work. Was told "Yeah, the light switch doesn't work right" ever since he dropped the bike in October. It could be that the bike was ridden for prolonged periods of time since then with the light OFF. However, with no headlight on, I saw that R/R did charge up into the 14.5V range, but as soon as light (low-beam) is switched on, it barely reaches the 12.5 to 13V mark.
When I put the other R/R in last summer, I bypassed the one wire rerouted through the headlight and hooked up all 3 phases directly from stator to R/R.
Is the problem:
1) possibly due to R/R being damaged because of too much juice hitting it when bike was being run without headlight on, even though this was supposedly not often.
Or 2) could it be a short somewhere, since I would've thought that the R/R, if faulty, would NOT be that close to optimal output just by switching off the stock headlight.
PS - After he dropped the bike, he did install another instrument cluster (from another year) on it. But I cannot think of anything off-hand in respect to the instrument cluster wiring that could cause a problem with the charging, unless something is shorted.
Hooked up the voltmeter (with good battery in it!!8-[ ) to the bike's battery. It will hardly go up to 12.6V when revved up to the 5k mark. By coincidence, I decided to try with high beam on, and saw to my surprise the high beam did not work. Was told "Yeah, the light switch doesn't work right" ever since he dropped the bike in October. It could be that the bike was ridden for prolonged periods of time since then with the light OFF. However, with no headlight on, I saw that R/R did charge up into the 14.5V range, but as soon as light (low-beam) is switched on, it barely reaches the 12.5 to 13V mark.
When I put the other R/R in last summer, I bypassed the one wire rerouted through the headlight and hooked up all 3 phases directly from stator to R/R.
Is the problem:
1) possibly due to R/R being damaged because of too much juice hitting it when bike was being run without headlight on, even though this was supposedly not often.
Or 2) could it be a short somewhere, since I would've thought that the R/R, if faulty, would NOT be that close to optimal output just by switching off the stock headlight.
PS - After he dropped the bike, he did install another instrument cluster (from another year) on it. But I cannot think of anything off-hand in respect to the instrument cluster wiring that could cause a problem with the charging, unless something is shorted.
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