Had Levo mosey over today complaining of a flat battery and having to charge it to go anywhere. On the regulator the earth terminal was burnt to a crisp, I stuck a spare regulator on that I had purloined from red last week and sure enough it threatened to do the same, using my clamp current meter (best thing I ever bought apart from the lump hammer) and measured 25-30 Amps flowing through the ground wire and about 8 through the battery + wire. Hhhmmmm, there's 20A+ going missing somewhere.
Measured each of the phases of the alternator and sure enough they were shorted to ground though one of them, ie I got 2.2 ohms from 2 of them to ground and 1.7 in the 3rd one.
Checked the wiring down to where it disappears under the starter, no visible problems, took the stator cover off and hey presto the short disappeared between the stator wires and the bike ground.
At first I though it was the wires where the clamps were which had all the protective covering worn away:-
The covering was worn away under the bottom clamp and the one at the stator as well, but nope it was still there when these were released. Then I thought maybe the grommet where the wires were exposed where they entered the grommet (more about this thing later):-
But no, with the stator totally out and no wiring touching anything the short is still there to the case of the stator itself. I'll hack around with it later to see if it's anything fixable, may just be some of the enamel insulation broken down. So we got Levo going by pinching the stator out of my argy as it won't be used for some time yet!
Changed the plugs to suit and hey presto 17+ Amps flowing nicely into the battery on both the earth and +ve leads. Success!
Now to that grommet, what's with it? The wires don't go straight through, there seems to be about a quarter of an inch between where the wires go in and where they come out and the won't pull through. Is there a connection inside it somewhere? All three wires on Levos grommet broke off too easily!
Measured each of the phases of the alternator and sure enough they were shorted to ground though one of them, ie I got 2.2 ohms from 2 of them to ground and 1.7 in the 3rd one.
Checked the wiring down to where it disappears under the starter, no visible problems, took the stator cover off and hey presto the short disappeared between the stator wires and the bike ground.
At first I though it was the wires where the clamps were which had all the protective covering worn away:-
The covering was worn away under the bottom clamp and the one at the stator as well, but nope it was still there when these were released. Then I thought maybe the grommet where the wires were exposed where they entered the grommet (more about this thing later):-
But no, with the stator totally out and no wiring touching anything the short is still there to the case of the stator itself. I'll hack around with it later to see if it's anything fixable, may just be some of the enamel insulation broken down. So we got Levo going by pinching the stator out of my argy as it won't be used for some time yet!
Changed the plugs to suit and hey presto 17+ Amps flowing nicely into the battery on both the earth and +ve leads. Success!
Now to that grommet, what's with it? The wires don't go straight through, there seems to be about a quarter of an inch between where the wires go in and where they come out and the won't pull through. Is there a connection inside it somewhere? All three wires on Levos grommet broke off too easily!
). When I was having problems with my charging system, I noticed that the wiring was getting pretty brittle. Definately a weak point in the system.
