Faulty Rectifier Regulator

Faulty Regulator Rectifier,
I hope this info might be of some use to any new or old owners, as I have gained some very useful information from this site. My 2000 VFR failed to re-start after about 1 hour night riding after a 10 minute refreshment break!! My first thought was the battery could be on it's way out ,so I replaced the battery and invested in a charger. I decided to checkout the alternator to make sure this was not the course of the problem. The alternator was satisfactory in producing 50 volts AC at around 5000 rpm across the three yellow wires that exit the alternator and connect to the RR. The VFR manual also gives the resistance across any of the three yellow wires as 0.1 to 1 Ohm. My readings were 0.4 Ohm across each of them. I then checked out the RR voltage output by taking a DC voltage meter reading across the battery. This dropped from 13.8 volts at tick over to 13.4 volts at 5000 rpm once the engine had warmed up. The manual suggests a voltage should be around 14.5 volts in order to charge the battery and supply enough current to work the lights. This seemed to be the underlining problem in keeping the battery charged. I replaced the RR and re-checked the voltage across the battery at 5000 rpm once warm with the lights on and recorded 14.3 volts. I suppose as my beer glass is always half full and not half empty I was lucky as some regulators once they become faulty or damaged have allowed 30 to 50 volts AC shoot through the electrical system causing widespread damage. I decided to fit a cooling system onto the new RR as suggested by http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stu.tyrrell/index.html, as these RR do get extremely hot and heat and electrical components don't get on too well. Using this fan cooling design system is very effective in keeping the RR cool. It would be interesting to gather some info on the prevention of this type of electrical failure using this cooling system. It seems to make sense to me. I wonder if the Honda?s VFR team of brains can come up with anything better ???

Hope this is of any use

    Chris. Timmins

 

Installed the EloctroSports R/R for the 98 VFR (now unavailable on their website) and the VFRness and got 14.5 volts across the battery terminals consistently. Managing the wiring was a pain but I'm going on a big roadtrip and hopefully no issues

 

I have not heard of problems following the computer fan mod.

 

What is a good website to find a rectifier? I have an 03 vfr

 

Got mine for the 03 VFR at ElectroSports but there are other sources also (Rick's and the guy who sells the VFRness).