Clam bike overcharging update, heres the story..

[Road_Clam]

Well, I have solved one of the nagging issues with the Clam bike this year. To re-cap my initial issue my bike was overcharging to the tune of 16.5V, which was slowly "cooking" the acid right out of the battery, which was causing all kinds of odd electrical issues. I purchased a brand new Electrix (which is now Electrosport) stator, AND R/R back in 2005. We called Electrosport and informed them of the issue, and they promptly replied they will replace the R/R if it's faulty at no charge. Now what else could cause an overcharging condition? Nothing, it basically has to be the R/R. Stators either put out XX per phase voltage, or they don't.
A month goes by, and no answer from Electrosport, and no replacement R/R. We call them and they claim my R/R is testing to "within specification" and they mailed it back to me 2 weeks ago. So now I am very pi$$ed off. I am not directly dealing with Electrosport, my Suzuki tech buddy Jay has been. So I'm kinda getting 3rd party info on exactly what BS is going on.
I ended up purchasing a Rick's R/R for fairly cheap money as a 2nd option, and low and behold, Jay installs the Rick's R/R and my bike's charging output is now 14.5V, which is perfect. (And of course a new battery).
So long story short, I am laying down a VERY NEGITIVE FEEDBACK AS TO THE SUPPORT FROM ELECTROSPORT. I don't recommend anyone purchase Electrosport components, so you won't have to deal with the BS that I have gone through for the past 2 months.

Thank god I have a reliable HARLEY to ride while the Clam bike sits in the shop...

 

[chiphead]

That sucks. Glad you got it sorted out. I've had good luck with Ricks.

 

[duaneage]

I've had a lot of former electrosport customers buy Honda RRs from me. I don't publicly bash them but I think a change occurred a few years ago when they changed names. The Honda RRs may be old but the fact they all work 25-30 years after being produced is a testament to their engineering and reliability.

 

[Dave8338]

Duane: I may have a few questions when I get my R/R from the Honda 500 Silverwing pulled. Any tips I need to know before I start the process? \\/

 

[posplayr]

Road_Clam

Road_Clam

We called Electrosport and informed them of the issue, and they promptly replied they will replace the R/R if it's faulty at no charge. Now what else could cause an overcharging condition? Nothing, it basically has to be the R/R. Stators either put out XX per phase voltage, or they don't.

I have documented on this forum, that when I originally got my bike it was doing what sounds like essentially what you bike was doing.
* The battery was low of acid
* The battery voltage at RPM would range into the mid 16's volts
* I also had some fried ground wires and many connect ins that had gotten hot.

I had a spare parts bike OEM R/R as well as the OEM R/R on the bike. Through a process of elimination, I cleaned all of the connections added ground straps and added the heat sink. When I got done I confirmed that I had very low voltage drops between the R/R and battery on both sides (+/-) at idle as well as at 4000 RPM and had the same R/R operating. I had confirmed that both OEM R/Rs did essentially the same thing which they did within a few 0.1 volts .

So the bottom line is, I was able to take an overcharging bike and make it operate completely within factory spec by addressing the grounding and connections. So the R/R doesn't have to be bad. Now you might ask how does this happen. This is the subject of much discussion and debate here at GSR.

It is clear to me that you can very easily have an under charging condition. I was formulating a theory for a mechanism for overcharging to occur. It involves the frame ground returns and the voltage potential of the frame rising above the battery and the effect that might have raising the R/R reference.

Anyway, my point here is that your R/R from Electrosport has the same topology as the OEM one, that is there are no separate battery voltage sense wires and a perfectly good R/R can be confused into over or under charging. The Honda is better at this. So while it is unfortunate, I'm guessing that the R/R you sent back to Electropsort was working "as per spec" and so they just sent it back albeit kinda late.

Make sure you have checked your battery connections grounds and also have a good ground to the frame. I have found that having the R/R negative grounded to the case and the frame while providing a direct path to the battery produced the best charging situation.

Even though I have a brand new Electrosport in the box (and also a Honda unit from duaneage), the stock R/R is operating fine. I did swap out the stator for a new Electrosport model as the insulation on that was a concern after all these years. Things also worked the same after that. As I mentioned before I did this methodically to insure that I was not masking a potential problem by just swapping out parts. That strategy was successful as simply improving the electrical connections restored charging health.

Now if you have bad parts cleaning the connection wont fix bad parts. .

Posplayr

 

[Road_Clam]

I have documented on this forum, that when I originally got my bike it was doing what sounds like essentially what you bike was doing.
* The battery was low of acid
* The battery voltage at RPM would range into the mid 16's volts
* I also had some fried ground wires and many connect ins that had gotten hot.

I had a spare parts bike OEM R/R as well as the OEM R/R on the bike. Through a process of elimination, I cleaned all of the connections added ground straps and added the heat sink. When I got done I confirmed that I had very low voltage drops between the R/R and battery on both sides (+/-) at idle as well as at 4000 RPM and had the same R/R operating. I had confirmed that both OEM R/Rs did essentially the same thing which they did within a few 0.1 volts .

So the bottom line is, I was able to take an overcharging bike and make it operate completely within factory spec by addressing the grounding and connections. So the R/R doesn't have to be bad. Now you might ask how does this happen. This is the subject of much discussion and debate here at GSR.

It is clear to me that you can very easily have an under charging condition. I was formulating a theory for a mechanism for overcharging to occur. It involves the frame ground returns and the voltage potential of the frame rising above the battery and the effect that might have raising the R/R reference.

Anyway, my point here is that your R/R from Electrosport has the same topology as the OEM one, that is there are no separate battery voltage sense wires and a perfectly good R/R can be confused into over or under charging. The Honda is better at this. So while it is unfortunate, I'm guessing that the R/R you sent back to Electropsort was working "as per spec" and so they just sent it back albeit kinda late.

Make sure you have checked your battery connections grounds and also have a good ground to the frame. I have found that having the R/R negative grounded to the case and the frame while providing a direct path to the battery produced the best charging situation.

Even though I have a brand new Electrosport in the box (and also a Honda unit from duaneage), the stock R/R is operating fine. I did swap out the stator for a new Electrosport model as the insulation on that was a concern after all these years. Things also worked the same after that. As I mentioned before I did this methodically to insure that I was not masking a potential problem by just swapping out parts. That strategy was successful as simply improving the electrical connections restored charging health.

Now if you have bad parts cleaning the connection wont fix bad parts. .

Posplayr

I specifically ran a series of additional ground wires from each component that is mounted to the rubber isolated panel to the engine case, so a questionable ground doesn't apply in my situation.