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Just swapped out my R/R

  • Thread starter Thread starter ShirleySerious
  • Start date Start date
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ShirleySerious

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My regulator and rectifier on my '78 GS550E were letting the voltage run too high, so I bought the one off a Honda. Problem is, I was a little confused, since this is one unit and my bike originally came with a regulator AND a rectifier. A little research said that the green wire is ground, the red wire goes to the other red wire, and the 3 yellow wires go to the stator, even though the original colors that went there were yellow, green-white and blue-white. A black wire is supposedly a "sense" wire, which I connected to the brown wire going to the tail light.

I got everything connected, but now I have two wires dangling free that I don't know what to do with. They are both taped together in the same strand, so they must be related. One is red-white and the other is green-white. I know the red-white wire came from the old rectifier and the green-white wire went to the stator. I'm not an electrician, so I couldn't understand the wiring diagrams in the Clymer manual.

One wire is male, the other is female. Should I, ahem, hook them up, or should I tape the ends up and leave them free?
 
Your two loose wires are likely the ones that go to the headlight switch. Earlier bikes (yours might be included) routed one of the stator windings to the headlight, so that if you had the headlight off, you also cut out one of the stator windings so the r/r did not have to work so hard. Verify that you still have a working headlight, then don't worry about the wires.

About your "new" r/r wires...I would be more inclined to believe that the BLACK wire would be the ground, not the GREEN. Is there a difference in the size of the wires? If so, the larger one would be the ground.


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With the two wires dangling, I tried to see if the headlight would work. It did. I would think that the headlight wouldn't light up if those wires were vital. The three yellow wires that come off the R/R seem to all go to the stator.

The way it was before, my regulator had one yellow wire and a black wire that was for ground. The yellow wire went to a Y-connector, in which the yellow wire from the rectifier was also plugged into. The old rectifier had a ground wire, a red wire, a blue-white wire which went to the stator and a red-white wire that went to IDK where. The Y-connector is now just connecting 2 wires, and there's a spot for another wire to be plugged into.

The green wire is a ground wire because is has a circle connector that other ground wires have. The black wire is supposedly a sense wire, which detects a circuit.
 
Makes "sense" to me, then. 8-[



Not sure what Honda's color codes are, I have only had one for about a year and a half. :oops:
But...it's a Wing and doesn't need work. \\:D/


Actually, your 'sense' wire doesn't 'detect a circuit'. What it does is sense what the actual output voltage is and adjusts the output accordingly. By using the sense wire, the regulator can put out more at low speed without overcharging at higher speed.



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The extra wires from the light switch DO NOT go anywhere except to the switch & back. Just leave them disconnected- everything works fine
Look up My reg Modification if you question the correct hookup
Hook the sense wire to the hot side of the brakelight switch
 
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Here's a couple pictures. The wires in question are circled, though it's a little hard to see the red-white wire.
wiring001qc3.jpg

wiring002li0.jpg
 
I took it out last night and it ran fine, except the gear indicator shows garbled numbers. Everything looks connected fine, but I can't figure out why it's doing that.
 
The gear indicators are just lights behind plastic numbers, at least on mine. What do you mean by garbled? can you take a picture?
 
I'll take a picture a little later, but on the 550 the gear indicator is digital. Think of a digital alarm clock.
 
Sounds like it might be time to take it apart and check the solder connections of the board. Time and vibration (both of which our bikes have plenty of) will deteriorate solder connections. Just heat up each connection a bit to re-flow the solder, and let it cool.


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Not sure what board you're talking about, but I don't have a soldering iron, nor do I know how to solder. Did I mention that this has only happened since I put the new R/R in and that it works fine when I switch off the lights?
 
Jeez what a picky bike. Before I had too high voltage, now I have too low. There's just no pleasing it.
 
Steve said:
You are only about 6 hours away from me. For gas money and a couple of meals, I'll come up there and fix it for you. 8-[


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Click to expand...

Sorry, I'm dead broke. I think I'll take another look in the Clymer and maybe whack the bike with a mallet a couple times. A little discipline never hurt anyone.
 
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