Rectifier regulator failure?

Dielectric grease. I am not a fan. Good luck with that.

 

I use dielectric grease on all my connectors, I've used it for years now and it's never failed me / caused me issues yet.

 

One thing I have seen from folks that have issues with dielectric grease is that way too much is used and the connections were not clean. On my vintage bikes I never use dielectric on the hand control switches as there typically is not enough spring pressure to make contact through each part of the switch. This either causes the switch not to work or to get hot from minimal contact and arcing.

For pressure situations such as frame connections and pins I have seen no issues, but again you do not want to use a lot because it is an insulator. It is also water proof which should help reduce or eliminate corrosion between the connection points.

One other note is that there are locations on the wiring where there are dissimilar metals at a single location. As an example where I found the 4 green ground wires connected to the frame. There were 2 brass eyelets each having 2 wires, the aluminum frame and the steel screw that connected everything to the frame. At that point there are 3 dissimilar metals (not including the wire) each of which will create different corrosive activity with the mating surface. Hence the reason I suspect I did found corrosion at the location although not a significant amount, but it was still there and potentially can create a poor connection. So with that said if you replace connectors, let's say one half make sure that the male/female connectors are of the same material as it's mate.

 

So tires, oil and use of dielectric grease all have the same effect with opinions! Jeff, first it's Rotella, now dielectric grease, are you trying to ruin your VFR! :wink:

 

Lolz. I say do what ever one feels is right for their bike and themselves.

I put on more miles on my bike than the majority of riders in a year (probably in the top percentiles) and never had a breakdown that could have been avoided. I think that says I'm either doing something right or I'm just really lucky. Lolz

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In 2010 after my first charging system failure, I cleaned and applied dielectric grease to all the connections that I could easily get to. Over the next couple of years almost all of those connections failed on by one. Inspecting them revealed each of those connections had dried up/burnt dielectric grease in them that had turned into a green corrosive powder. I am so happy that I never applied dielectric grease to the ECU connections. I see no good coming from putting an insulating grease in between a terminal and then passing current through it. That insulating grease is resistive and will build up heat and eventually dry up and turn into a corrosive green powder. If I were to use a grease in the terminals I would probably use oxigard as it is conductive and not insulating, so it would not heat up and dry out over time. It doent matter for me anymore, since all my connections that failed due to dielectric grease have since been cut out and soldered across.

 

Yeah yeah yeah

Each to their own. My experience has been the opposite and I've been using the stuff for ever.

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I think that like everything, there are good experiences and bad experiences but ultimately like tires and oil, we choose what works for us and stick with it unless we have a bad experience. Personally I use an Oxguard type protective on my electrical connectors, taking into account not to use too much. A light coating and wipe off the excess after connectors are tightened down (i.e. battery terminals) or slid together. Every oil change I inspect and reapply if needed but being diligent about checking and maintaining tour connections is probably more important than what you put on your connections.

Dielectric grease vs conductive grease

 

+1 on this. Like you I have seen this on many topics on many different forums with different experiences. What I do find is that there are a lot of people that are DIY like myself. Although I have been doing this a long time there are still things to learn and also things to filter out based on things like continued problems from the same folks. I have seen it over and over that some folks just shouldn't do things by their-selves.

This experience with the stator on my wife's VFR is the first non self inflicted failure that I have had on a moto in 40 years. Although with that said I really have never been stranded by any failure other than this one, Oh and one flat tire caused by a bad tire mounting from the factory. The tube got pinched in the rim and tore. Yea many years ago when everything still had tube tires.