My FJR only has a couple of power hungry farkles, a set of 55W PIAAs and heated grips and I was trying to power them with a stock stator and R/R. The PIAAs alone were too much for my electrical system so I decided to give the Electrosport stator a go even knowing that it wasn't looking too good for WC. I ran out of time and had to get my motorcycle back together, and as a result didn't get all the information I wanted. I have scope shots I need to go back and review as well as a bunch of electrical readings to sort through. What follows is just putting out some of my measurements without analysis.
When new my FJR would show 14.x volts on my Passport with a fairly steady .x digit. By 20k miles it was reading 13.8 volts with the last digit wandering +/- .5 volts without the PIAAs on. The heated grips made almost no difference in voltage. By 26k miles I was only seeing 13.4 volts and serious wandering of the .x digit. When the PIAAs were first installed I would see 13.8 volts until I turned them on, it would drop to 13.1 volts then slowly descend to 12.8 volts and sort of hang around there for 15-20 minutes then start to drop again. Click – off. At 26k miles turning the PIAAs on resulted in 12.5 volts for a minute or so then it began a bottomless drop where I usually ran out of courage once I started seeing <11.8 volts. The battery in my FJR is a year old, in good shape and had just received 4 hours of charging via a ride that kept the rpms up. Time for the fun to begin.
Previously I had put a scope on my DC voltage line and found ~2 volts of noise. The peak of the noise
was 14.3 volts and the bottom was ~12.6. This resulted in an average voltage of 13.4 volts, just about what my DMM showed.
Plastic off, radiator fill hose relocated, R/R exposed, everything stock. I back-probed the +14 Vout of the R/R and started the engine. Readings at the R/R connector: @ 5K rpm = 14.3 volts(!); at the battery terminals it was down to 13.8 volts and on the ignition switched wires it was 13.4 volts – only with basic electrical system loading. Big HHMMMM. Checked the AC from the stock stator to the stock R/R: at idle, it was ~10.x volt square wave @ nominal load; it dropped to 9.x volts at 5k rpm; turned on PIAAs as a full electrical load and the R/R allowed the voltage to rise to 11.x volts – the system was trying to work. One note here is that the square wave looked like one phase was dropping out under full load. I unplugged the stator wires and checked output on all three phases, R/R was totally out of the picture, and found a healthy 72 VAC on each phase. With the stator wires open, the stator output was rock steady. Plugged into the R/R and the AC voltage fluctuated +/- almost a volt. The DC voltage fluctuation mirrored the stator fluctuation. This makes it almost a sure deal that the bouncing voltage is caused by the regulator switching the stator. Because of the resistance in the main power feed line the battery isn't able to provide as much power smoothing as it could.
A quick from the hip conclusion is that under the conditions in my garage the R/R was working ok, there is some question about why the stator showed one phase dropping out. Could be the stator, might be load switching by the R/R. What's up with the big time voltage drop between the R/R and the rest of the electrical system? Err, well this is an adventure waiting for snow season. Will sort out all the little voltage drops then. Right now the big suspect is the main fuse/fuse socket followed by the harness.
In goes a new R/R. Repeat tests. Same as above including the dropped phase of the stator and fluctuations of the AC from the stator. Nothing else to note here.
Off comes the engine stator cover. Two WTFs right away. WTF #1:
Meet crispy, the dark chocolate stator. The wires should be a very light tan. It looked exactly like that even after a solvent wash --- >
An even more serious WTF is the rotor, check out the groove cut into the rotor by the stator wire holding bracket:
Grrr. You guys that had a squealing noise for a few minutes after startup now probably know what you were hearing. Hope your oil filter pulled out the lathe shavings.
I had no trouble snaking the R/R weather pack stator connector through the frame. I did move the black plastic shield out a bit then slid the wires down between the plastic shield and the frame until the wires were clear of the shield then the connector just passed right through. After doing all that work I looked at the nice weather pack connector and decided to use it. Snip, snip, snip. Using a good quality crimper and good spade terminals I crimped on the spades to mate with the Electrosport stator connectors. I slipped ~4" lengths of ¼ inch dia shrink sleeve over the connectors. After pulling the Electrosport wires through the frame I plugged the ES wires into the weather pack connector, pulled the shrink sleeve up and shrunk it. The tubing is tight over the wires and will be very water resistant.
Air tools rule! An air ratchet wrench made short work of all the cover screws. An impact wrench set for minimum torque and fitted with precision ground tools made the stator hardware totally painless. I was fortunate that ~95% of the cover gasket stayed on the cover making gasket scraping pretty simple. In goes Big Blue. Reposition the stator wire bracket. Reposition the bracket again until well out of the way of the rotor. Redo hardware in reverse order. Check the check list. Time to try again.
It starts! It runs! No load the stator shows ~66 VAC. Electosport did say they traded some voltage to get extra current. Connect the stator wires to the R/R. Now the scope shows all three phases. With the stator plugged into the R/R I see 10.x VAC at idle at normal system load. At 5k rpm I see 8.x VAC (hmm). Back to 5k rpm and turn on the PIAAs……………11.2 VAC. Not nearly what I was expecting to see. Now at the R/R Red/Black leads I see 14.4 volts; at the battery I see 14.2 volts; with grips (at idle; at the battery) I see 14.0 volts; with PIAAs I see 13.9 volts – after a few minutes I see 13.5 volts – and it looks like it is going to hold there. My Passport, reading the switched ignition voltage shows 13.8 volts, flickering ~.2 volts +/-. With grips it shows 13.6 volts and with the PIAAs it shows 12.5 volts. So, I still have flickering.
So ends round one that was a thrash to finish. If I see one big opportunity for improvement it would be to use 10 ga wire directly from the R/R through a DC circuit breaker like a Bussman automatic resetting circuit breaker going directly to the battery. I will go back and try to make some sense out of all this. I'm making provisions to be able to monitor voltage at both the R/R and battery terminals. Dunno when that will get finished.
