How does a R/R get damaged?

My stator wires burned through a month ago, so I put on a new R/R. On my first ride, the bike died after about 15 miles. I trickle charged it and rode back, died again at about the same distance. The stator is fried, duh. Got a new stator on warranty from Electrosport yesterday, but they sent it to me without the wiring grommet and harness clip! Struggling with them today to return my call and send me back the parts from the first stator.

I am ready to re-mount the R/R above the rear wheel to improve airflow as per Jonathan Andrews suggestion and rewire the battery harness... here is my question: Should I replace the R/R again now, too? How does a new R/R "go bad" or "short out" or "blow a diode" or whatever? Is is possible that I damaged it by not feeding it enough AC from the fried stator, which led to the complete battery drain? I am not yet able to do any voltage checks yet with the new stator installed. How can I check if a R/R is good?

 

You can do a diode test on the R/R I think. Use Electrosport's troubleshooting flow chart to see what is bad (it is a very good chart) and get a digital multimeter. There is a good "how-to" on the VFRD forum also. Just do a search. I would give you a link to it but, I got kicked off their site for disagreeing with the MOD.

http://www.electrosport.com/electrosport_fault_finding.html

click on PDF file.

Unfortunately if any one of the parts in the system are bad it could fry the R/R, ruin the battery, and fry wires. I burned out an R/R simply because of an old dead battery. I got an ES R/R and it fried again because the connectors to the battery came undone while riding. I decided to go with OEM even though it costs twice as much, I am resting easy that it is connected well. I haven't had any problems since!
Good Luck

 

Thanks for the good word... I diode-tested the three R/R's I have here at the house, they are all bad. I'll go see how the new one is on Saturday.

What is the best choice for a stator? OEM or Electrosport? Electrosport claims that their stator has twice as many windings than OEM... but I've fried three of them already. I am putting forth this general theory... heat is the main cause of my charging system failures. I've cleaned connectors. Heat causes the R/R to partially fail at some point and that failure, (possibly a backflow of AC back into the stator via a diode break?) with high engine and ambient temperatures at the now-vulnerable stator causes a insulation failure and windings to join in an increasing spiral of events. The stator starts putting out higher and higher current, frying the R/R and in turn frying itself. If I relocate my R/R to the rear wheel well to facilitate cooling, will that prevent the chain of failure events?

I am installing new components to test this one... I have to think that the Electosport has improved on the OEM, but what do you guys think?

 

I tend to trust the OEM even though they are more expensive. Of course ES is going to say that they have an equal or superior product. But they do not know the bikes as well as the honda engineers do. I got an OEM Honda R/R and it was bigger (bigger cooling fins) than the ES one and the original one on the bike, so it's obvious they changed it from 1998 till now. Also the plugs match up perfectly, unlike the ES ones.

If you do a search on this RR issue you will see that much debate has been had about the cooling issue. Some even go as far as putting CPU fans on their RR. I don't think that it has as much influence as people think. I think failures mostly have to do with wiring, shorts, bad connections, and components. Make sure you test all your connections for a leak, clean them and put dielectric grease on all of them especially if you live somewhere wet. Test your battery and have it load tested at an auto parts store.

It certainly won't hurt moving it to somewhere with more airflow though. I live in Arizona where it gets up to 110 sometimes and if you think about it, that is still cooler than what the RR is, thus cooling it. I am thinking about drilling a few holes up under the wheel well right behind where the RR is mounted to get a better flow since I don't have to worry about wet weather riding very often.

It looks like you have spent a lot of money on this already. Test Test Test before you do anything and/or replace stator, RR, and battery all at once.

 

Well my luck has run out. I am again having charging problems. I think the battery may be at fault. I hope I am not out another RR too. I have to spend a Saturday again troubleshooting that goddam system.