Well I thought I had this all resolved last summer with the new main fuse holder, soldering a few connections and a VFRness but I'm having charging issues (surprise, surprise....) ever since I took by bike out last week and had a quick question about the resistance readings from one yellow wire coming from the stator to another.
(First off, yes the battery is good. Had it load tested yesterday)
Anyways, I was using the service manual troubleshooting steps and then decided to have a look at the electrosport flow chat. The service manual states that if the resistance is between 0.1 ohms and 1.0 ohms, to go to the next step. In the flow chart however, if readings are not between 0.5 ohms and 2.0 ohms, the stator is found to be at fault.
Now my readings are AB: 0.3, AC: 0.2 and BC: 0.2, which is fine by the service manual standards but not by the flow chart standards.
I know a lot of other things can be in play and I may be back with full results and more questions but was simply wondering which range of readings to go by.
Test both the resistance, and AC voltage output with the stator hot. They will often test OK cold, but fail when warmed up. As long as the wiring shows some resistance the windings are not hard shorted, and the stator will be functional. Those readings are on the low side so it could be soft shorting. If the AC voltage output is low as well the windings are deteriorating which puts too much current into the R/R.
+1 on a hot resistance check. You may as well do a pin to ground check too. Should be nada - infinity, no conductivity. And the AC volts - idle to 5k and up.
So I got the bike warm by letting it idle for 10-15 minutes. Got it up a little past 100 C (about 212F). I imagine that is what would be considered a hot test but please let me know if this is not the case.
Resistance was a little higher, more or less 0.3 - 0.4 for each pair (AB, AC and BC).
Testing in ohms from each yellow wire to the engine casing got a beep each time.
AC voltage at about 500RPM is really low... AB is about 18v and both AC and BC are around 26.
JUst about in every case a bad stator is generally shorted to ground stator, if its bad, doing the stator to ground test, there will be no need to go further.
So back off ac, ab ect. set your meter on Mega ohms, in order to detect the slightest continuity, this is why you need to be on a real high setting, or you can miss a short.
How does this test come out , each yellow wire to ground?
From what I can gather your stator is shot. V AC readings should be identical for all three combinations and equal to roughly 11.5 V AC per each 1000 rpm.
I understand you are taking those readings with the stator to R/R disconnected, at least that is the proper way to do it.
Yes, this is with the bike warm (about 100C), revs at about 5000rpm and the stator disconnected from the RR.
Weird how it would die during the winter storage months. I was having very slight charging issues at the end of last season but I though it was just the cold weather making it harder to start.
Oh well, I guess at 60000km (37000 miles) that's not too bad for the original stator. I'll also order a Ricks's RR as I imagine it's a question of time before that goes.
Yeah it's the heat cycles not the heat itself that destroys the insulation on the windings. I bet when you pull that stator out it will look like top brown toast on top.
If and when you do the high resistance (megohm) stator test, be sure to keep your fingers off the pointed leads. Most ohm meters that are better than junk will read a resistance through your body and give you a false reading.
It was the original stator and the bike now has just over 60 000km (about 37 000 miles). It no longer had the connector though as I cut that off and inserted 12 gauge wires and bullet connectors instead last year (see my previous thread where I though I had it resolved).
Rick's seems to have some great feedback so I decided to go with them for both the new stator and the RR I bought as a spare.
I just pulled my Rick's stator with nearly 40K on it for other reasons, and it looks pretty good. A little brown on top, but nowhere near burnt. Looks like I will be extending my stator replacement schedule to 50K for this round. I will replace this one anyway, and keep it as a spare.
Yesterday, I discovered that my bike had fried its reg/rec to stator connector block. It is a 1999 5th gen with about 222,000km on it (about 137,900 miles). It has a vfrness, upgraded reg/rec from wiremybike.com and the OEM honda stator, all of which were installed about a year and a half and 35,000km ago. It also has a 5-point grounding kit that was already installed when I bought the bike.
The battery, stator output voltages and coil resistances were okay.
Curiously, it was the reg/rec side stator connectors that were fried, even though the wires there are of a much thicker gauge than the stator wires.
While I know this is a common problem with the VFR, I am a little worried that it has happened again so soon. I am of the idea that it might be indicative of problems elsewhere within the wiring harness. Might the vast overmind of data that is VFRD have any idea off the top of its head as to the probable causes? :491:
My guess would be the connection simply became loose with vibration, and heat cycles which led to arcing which led to a deteriorating connection which led to heat in the connector which continued on the downward spiral.
End of thread · 20 posts recoveredWayback Machine snapshot 30 Apr 2014
![[image: 14021225826_300b544367_n.jpg]](https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7458/14021225826_300b544367_n.jpg){kind=link}