Charging........

[pnkrkr4lif]

My eyes hurt from looking at all the threads about the charging system. Bike reads 12.8-13.1 @ idle with loads and no loads. Take the revs to 3k and it reads the same, though I did see a 13.4 once. What needs to be cleaned or replaced. I get home and plug my bike in every night and I feel it takes longer then it should to top the battery off. It takes several hours to finish. My old bike and my wife's bike took less then 30 minutes to top off

 

[pnkrkr4lif]

My eyes hurt from looking at all the threads about the charging system. Bike reads 12.8-13.1 @ idle with loads and no loads. Take the revs to 3k and it reads the same, though I did see a 13.4 once. What needs to be cleaned or replaced. I get home and plug my bike in every night and I feel it takes longer then it should to top the battery off. It takes several hours to finish. My old bike and my wife's bike took less then 30 minutes to top off

 

[Jer]

Maybe you need a new battery. I had a 2007 that I traded for my 2013 that had the original battery. The battery can be checked.

 

[sapest]

Racing to ask the obvious, check the battery connections?

-Steve

 

[pnkrkr4lif]

Got a new battery last week cause I didn't know how old it was and it was below 32* and the bike wouldn't start. So got a new battery and battery tender.

Racing to ask the obvious, check the battery connections?-Steve

All clean and tight

 

[TomInPA]

12.8 to 13.1 is battery voltage without the charging system. You may have a bad stator or regulator/rectifier. Diagnostics to narrow that down are in the service manual and amount to measuring resistance through the stator legs and stator to ground at the regulator plugs. If the bike gradually loses voltage the longer you use it, I'd say stator. If it is constant, it could be the regulator, or some bad connections or grounds. How many miles on this bike?

 

[pnkrkr4lif]

Bike has 38000 miles. I would just replace everything, but it is all so damn expensive for all of it

 

[SLK50]

<blockquote class='ipsBlockquote'data-author="pnkrkr4lif" data-cid="1270901" data-time="1447639881"><p>

Bike has 38000 miles. I would just replace everything, but it is all so damn expensive for all of it</p></blockquote>

It would really suck if, after replacing everything, the problem

persists. Proper diagnosis is the order of the day.

 

[MrZappo]

<blockquote class='ipsBlockquote'data-author="TomInCA" data-cid="1270898" data-time="1447639712"><p>

12.8 to 13.1 is battery voltage without the charging system. You may have a bad stator or regulator/rectifier. Diagnostics to narrow that down are in the service manual and amount to measuring resistance through the stator legs and stator to ground at the regulator plugs. If the bike gradually loses voltage the longer you use it, I'd say stator. If it is constant, it could be the regulator, or some bad connections or grounds. How many miles on this bike?</p></blockquote>

12.8 is a full battery. 13.1 would not be a typical voltage to see without some voltage coming from the stator.

Easy enough to test. Connect a dvm to the battery and read it before and after starting. Also will serve to tell if the battery is bad by noting the voltage during cranking.

Let us know.

 

[pnkrkr4lif]

My work schedule right now is ridiculous, I have no time around the house. Leave for work at 430am and home by 645pm. So I bought a R/R to try, just don't know when I will have enough time to do it. Is there a way to clean the stator? The rectifier seems pretty easy to replace.

 

[Fred W]

Where are you measuring those running voltages and with what? If that is an accurate measurement being made at the battery terminals it should measure 14.1 to 14.3V with no added load. If it doesn't you have charging system problems or a really bad battery.

Easiest thing to rule out is the battery. Put a new, fully charged one in the and see if the charge voltage improves. If it doesn't you'll need to measure the stator output and try to determine if it is inadequate, or if the regulator/rectifier is FUBAR.

 

[RossKean]

By the way, it should not take ANY time to "top off" a battery after a ride! If the battery is OK, connections are good and the charging system is working, you should return from any ride greater than 50 miles with a fully charged battery! This, of course, assumes that the battery started out with a decent charge, you didn't do a lot of stop-restart-and-go riding and you are not over-taxing the system with excessive loads from auxiliary lighting/heated gear etc.

Run the tests and see where the problem lies.

Edit: By the way, it is bad form to start two threads on the same subject!!

 

[Bounce]

We encourage members to use the REPORT button to help us track down duplicate threads or multi-posted threads across different areas of the forum. Consolidating replies makes future research easier for everyone.

 

[mcatrophy]

By the way, it should not take ANY time to "top off" a battery after a ride! If the battery is OK, connections are good and the charging system is working, you should return from any ride greater than 50 miles with a fully charged battery! ...

In my experience, you don't need 50 mile trips. My battery starts the bike, within about 5 seconds it's reading 14+ volts, even before moving. Maybe 2 or 3 miles of stop-and-go city traffic, never revving above about 2500. Park up.
Repeat ad nauseam.

Battery remains fully charged, this on two Gen 2 bikes and my present Gen 3.

 

[pnkrkr4lif]

Put in a new R/R and no change. Checked the resistance in the stator plug that comes out of the r/r and i was getting 0.14ohms in all 3 legs, which is in spec. So i then hooked up the multi meter to the same plug to see what the voltage is in all 3 legs, I came up with 4.8 volts on each leg which should add up to 14.4 volts. So somewhere between the r/r and the battery I'm loosing volts. Now what?

 

[mcatrophy]

So i then hooked up the multi meter to the same plug to see what the voltage is in all 3 legs, I came up with 4.8 volts on each leg which should add up to 14.4 volts. So somewhere between the r/r and the battery I'm loosing volts. Now what?

Not sure you quite understand what is going on, here. Your statement of three lots of 4.8 volts adding up to 12.4 has no meaning in this context, these voltages are not added in that way.

Was your meter set to measure AC or DC?

If AC, 4.8 volts is very low.

If DC, you should get near enough zero volts, are you sure there wasn't a little "m" in front of the display's "V"? That would mean millivolts.

Set the meter to AC volts. With the engine at idle, you should read something like 20V between any pair of the three connections. At 5000rpm, it's something like 70 volts (these are from memory).

All three should read the same (within a few percent).

One other check you should do, make sure there is no connection from any stator wire to the bike's frame. In the same way that you measured the resistance of a stator coil, measure between one of the connections and the bike's engine or frame. It should be open circuit (meter will show something like "oL" (overload), the same as it shows with the probes not connecting to anything, although it is possible your meter will show a very high reading (10M or so), this can be ignored.

 

[Donal]

Put in a new R/R and no change. Checked the resistance in the stator plug that comes out of the r/r and i was getting 0.14ohms in all 3 legs, which is in spec. So i then hooked up the multi meter to the same plug to see what the voltage is in all 3 legs, I came up with 4.8 volts on each leg which should add up to 14.4 volts. So somewhere between the r/r and the battery I'm loosing volts. Now what?

If you are getting this reading between each leg and ground then it looks like your stator is shorting to ground.

If you are lucky it may just be a problem in the lead, most likely where it exits the casing.

The readings (as pointed out by mcatrophy above ) should be between any pair of output leads.