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Blowing headlamps

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jburr
  • Start date Start date
J

Jburr

Guest
I have blown 2 headlamps in the the last month. When testing my battery with a volt meter, I am getting a reading of nearly 18 volts when I rev the engine. I am guessing that is too high? Need a new regulator?
 
Ooh, yes. Distinctly likely the most probably cause.
Also, check the headlamp mountings that nothing is causing hard vibes from frame to lamp shell - I had a period where headlight bulbs were lasting a month or two because of vibes.
 
Try running a ground from the R/R ground eye to the frame and battery.
Clean the stator connections to the R/R or solder directly.
Clean the red bullet from the positive terminal of the battery.
Recheck.
 
The r/r is toast and so will your other components if you keep ridding it that way
 
Jburr said:
I have blown 2 headlamps in the the last month. When testing my battery with a volt meter, I am getting a reading of nearly 18 volts when I rev the engine. I am guessing that is too high? Need a new regulator?
Click to expand...

Welcome to GSR.

And har har har welcome to having an 80s GS.

Yes 18 volts is way to high.

Good that you have a volt meter and can use it. (have a lot of folks trying to troubleshoot electrical problems with their eyeballs).

Need a new regulator? Maybe, or maybe need to check some wiring. Namely the grounding of the R/R.
You may find the black wire of R/R "grounded" to the solenoid mounting bolt on the battery box, but batterybox isn't a god ground bacuse not really mounted well to frame. And maybe a ground wire (black/white) there also, but sometimes that is not reliable. Hense why the recommendations to add your own ground wire from there to battery neg.
 
thanks for the input. this confirms my suspicions and gives me some things to try.
 
Agree with posplayr, the RR is shot. Toss it in the bin and get a newie, lots to choose from when buying online.

The foregoing is if you have a *combined" reg/rect. unit. If they are separate units (1979 and earlier, I believe), then you could do two things:
1. Just replace the regulator with an OE or 2nd-hand unit.
2. Get rid of both the regulator and the rectifier, and replace them with a combined reg/rect. unit. This will require a bit of fiddling around with rewiring, but it's not too hard and there's plenty of info. here on the GSR to help you do the job.

You will also find that, at a fiesty 18V, your battery will be getting cooked. So fix the problem before you do any more riding, or a new reg/rect. will be the least of your worries. :rolleyes:
 
I haven't had to change a headlight bulb since I installed a series R/R. I used to go through them every three or four months until my old shunt type R/R showed obvious signs of over voltage. At that rate it has already paid for itself.
 
OldVet66 said:
I haven't had to change a headlight bulb since I installed a series R/R. I used to go through them every three or four months until my old shunt type R/R showed obvious signs of over voltage. At that rate it has already paid for itself.
Click to expand...

I have never had to replace one on a GS. Not since they were new.
 
It just shows that my old R/R was bad for a long time until it got bad enough to boil my battery out. At that point I started learning about charging systems. Good voltage regulation, no bulbs burning out. You were lucky with R/R's and probably knew enough to do the proper maintenance. I was totally new to these bikes when I got this one.
 
OldVet66 said:
It just shows that my old R/R was bad for a long time until it got bad enough to boil my battery out. At that point I started learning about charging systems. Good voltage regulation, no bulbs burning out. You were lucky with R/R's and probably knew enough to do the proper maintenance. I was totally new to these bikes when I got this one.
Click to expand...

From my detailed analysis on the subject, the only way to over charge is either

  1. you have an old R/R that only controls one leg of the stator.
  2. the regulator portion of the R/R has to go bad.
  3. You put a 6 wire Honda R/R sense point in a really bad place(low voltage point WRT battery voltage).

Other than 3.) above Dirty connections CAN NOT cause over charging , they always result in UNDER CHARGING.

So if Tkent never used a Honda unit, kept his bikes charging in descent order, the regulator section of the R/R may very well have never failed on any of his bikes as temperature is the dominate failure mode for the R/R.
 
I incorrectly combined the two, my bike is a '78 and had a separate regulator and rectifier. I assume the regulator was going bad. It seemed to be fine except going through a lot of headlight bulbs for the better part of a year until it boiled out the battery and got my attention. That was about the time you were talking about the Compu-Fire. The rest is history.:)
 
I was only trying to explain how tom seems to lead a blessed charging existence.
 
posplayr said:
So if Tkent never used a Honda unit, kept his bikes charging in descent order, the regulator section of the R/R may very well have never failed on any of his bikes as temperature is the dominate failure mode for the R/R.
Click to expand...

Don't know if that's it. Where I live now its generally not too hot, but an engine running at full throttle all the way up a 13,000 foot pass has to get hot. I lived in Arizona and California for years and rode in the desert a lot, done quite a few long rides that were EXTREMELY hot. Most of my GS miles were around Seattle but with a lot of rides to Eastern Washington where it gets hot.

Most of my GSes have been eight valve models which don't run as hot, but have had several sixteen valvers too, no problems with them either.

A few of them may have had the Honda units but I never put them in.
 
posplayr said:
From my detailed analysis on the subject, the only way to over charge is either

  1. you have an old R/R that only controls one leg of the stator.
  2. the regulator portion of the R/R has to go bad.
  3. You put a 6 wire Honda R/R sense point in a really bad place(low voltage point WRT battery voltage).

Other than 3.) above Dirty connections CAN NOT cause over charging , they always result in UNDER CHARGING.

So if Tkent never used a Honda unit, kept his bikes charging in descent order, the regulator section of the R/R may very well have never failed on any of his bikes as temperature is the dominate failure mode for the R/R.
Click to expand...

It seems to me that a bad RR ground connection would not allow the RR to shunt the excess output to ground, causing overcharging....
 
bobgroger said:
It seems to me that a bad RR ground connection would not allow the RR to shunt the excess output to ground, causing overcharging....
Click to expand...

Explain that in terms of ohms law. I don't think it is possible other than how I described.
 
As alluded to in a couple of the other posts, by the time you lose your headlight, your battery is probably almost dry, so don't neglect making that right as part of your R/R troubleshooting.

That's been my experience anyway.
 
posplayr said:
Explain that in terms of ohms law. I don't think it is possible other than how I described.
Click to expand...
A shunt regulator shunts excess voltage to ground. No ground, no shunt, no regulation. With Ohm's law, resistance to ground increases, current flow (regulation) decreases. Go undo the ground to your shunt RR, I'll bet the charging voltage goes way up.

Unless the RR is also grounded through the case, in which case forget what I said.
 
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