6th gen stator, RR, wiring, battery all good, but doesn't charge? help!

Hi, so this problem is driving me mad. Last week we installed new manual cam chain tensioners in a 6th gen, did coolant flush, oil, air filter, etc... all the good stuff. Everything was looking right with the world and ready to ride. Now, suddenly, the bike won't charge. You run it more than a few minutes the battery will run dead and you lose spark.

I started with all of the usual stuff, consulted the motorcycle electrical fault finding flowchart, checked all the fuses, grounds, wiring...
Very fist thing out of the way, I get 12.5v at the the battery with the bike off, and 12.1v with it on, no more than 12.3 revved all the way up to 8k. so it is definitely draining and not charging when it's running.
I get 1.2 ohm at the RR harness on all the stator coils, no shorts, 50v AC at 5k rpm, so stator and the wiring to it are all working flawlessly.
I get <1.5ohm on the hot leads from the RR harness to the battery positive terminal, and <1.5ohm on the negative leads on the harness to the negative terminal and also to the chassis ground, and no continuity between hot and ground.
So at this point I presumed by process of elimination that it was the RR. We're ona tight time crunch to get this thing running, so we paid the $200 to have a new RR overnighted to us, plugged it in this afternoon... and still nothing. What? How? so we tested both the old and new RRs, all of the resistance and continuity tests check out, and I get 14.5v at idle and 16+v at 5k rpm, so they're both good!
If I hook it up to the bike though and disconnect the negative battery terminal with it running, it's only putting out 8-11v at the battery, and will quickly sputter and die as it fails to make spark.
As far as we can tell all of the electrical systems on the bike are working flawlessly, they're just not getting any juice.

I and my roommate have both been scratching our heads at this for the last 2 hours, and we're well and truly stumped. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

You tested the stator connections, right?
I only ask because I see where you described testing the R/R connector, but not the stator. The stator connector (the female side of the stator/RR connection) is where you want to have as close to 0 Ohms between a pin and ground (usually to the frame). anything more than .4 is bad, IIRC.
Then there is the rating between all 3 stator pins...

Again, if I misunderstood, I apologize.

 

Oh, and this is a good read as well, if you haven't:

Stator Tests - Electrical - VFR Discussion

 

I'm EvilStig's roommate and it is my VFR in question.

Yes we tested the power coming out of the stator. It perfectly matches the specs given in the service manual for all proscribed tests.

 

Man... I hate electrical issues...

Is the battery new?

 

well.. i have some bad news for you.. its your stator.. the isolation burned out and one phase of your stator is defenitly not strong enough.. its gonna cost you some but replacemen of it is very easy. too bay you bought new r/r because the old one is certanly ok.
Again i describe electical troubleshooting for vfr and pls read posts about it and you can diagnose in 10 minutes.
3 possible simtoms on vfr:

1.) bike suddenly stopped and fuses are burned out. light bulbs survived. 90% that the wiring somewhere in front is burned and shortcutted on ground. easy to repair and cheap
2.) battery drained, motor wont start/run, some lightbulbs can be burned and sometimes even battery is smelly and blown.. 99% regulator faliure.. start motor using a spare batter and measure charging voltage.. its should spike way beyond 14.4 Volts. regulator burned.. medium costs easy to repair... must change battery too
3.) and the most expensive one.. battery drained, with spare battery bike runs ok but it drains it.. charging not sufficient.. burned stator widing so it charges only 2/3rd of current and needs replacing.. original in eu costs 400+ eur and i dont reccomend alternatives as are all from china and unreliable. battery and r/r are almost always good

i hope i helped

ps: omg i didnt see what u did.. NEVER EVER UNPLUG BATTERY WITH MOTOR RUNNING OMG... YOU COULD BURN R/R AND STATOR BY DOING THAT ... JEEZ WHO TOLD YOU TO DO THAT :s:s:s

 

Here in the US, we have Rick's stators, several people have them on their VFRs, and are supposedly made here in the USA. And, sorry to say, even an OEM stator is likely to be made in China.

 

good for you. i know thats likely but stators from 2008 forward are diffirent, they have better insulation that wont break down cuz of temperature and hot oil mix. they should not fail.

 

I'm in the process of replacing a crap stator at the moment. My Rick's replacement should be here Monday. The current stator was putting out 35/35/15 so it has one phase buggered up and it is visibly overheated on one side. The previous owner went through two stators in 30k. FYI

 

Sadly the manual is not always as clear as it might be - especially when it comes to testing the electrical systems.

You have encountered the classic dilemma where individually, each part of the charging system (loom, stator, RR and battery) appears fine, but they are not happy as a system.

Like others, I suspect the stator will prove to be the culprit and the quickest confirmation is to get the spanners out, remove the fairing and pull the stator cover and have a look. Its a 20 minute job and you will need a new alternator cover gasket. If you put the bike on the centre stand, as you can see you will only loose an egg cup of oil. However I rather suspect that when you pull the cover it will reveal some nasty melted windings just like this on my 2007. Most of the windings were fried with that classic melting electrical component smell. but strangely the stator tested OK for AC output when it was cold.

View attachment 22289


One thing I was not clear over is that I assume you did the stator AC output tests twice - and both times with the RR disconnected? First time with the bike at idle and 5,000 rpm and then repeated the tests after taking the bike for a long hard ride - at least 30 minutes which should be enough to get the stator windings hot?

The point is, as the stator windings age, the insulating properties start to break down so that decent AC output recorded when the stator is cold can become a constant drain on the battery when the stator warms up. Certainly a lot of the findings you describe mirror what I found so puzzelling at the time.


Good luck - let us know how you get on



SkiMad

 

It won't charge because your battery is toast.

1. The electronic controllers for fuel injected systems can suffer major damage with disconnected battery leads--not a good practice in the digital world.

2. Your battery voltage measurements indicate a weak or bad battery. The RR will try to charge it with all its might, but a weak or bad battery will not take a charge no matter how much you throw at it. A weak battery will pull down the RR output voltage due to the high current going thru the battery, but this current is just heating the battery and not being stored.

3. Fuel erection bikes use lots of electricity and like to have a good solid voltage. Your battery sags to 12.1 when on is the indication that the power supply is not stiff enough.

What kind of battery is it? what is the age? can you access the electrolyte and measure the specific gravity--that is the only way to truly know the state of charge.

 

Hi,

So there's definitely not 'one stage' of the stator out since we tested all 3 stages and the perform identically with less than a 2% margin of error. We pulled the cover off last night, and the stator -looked- fine. No signs of burning, cracking, or anything else wrong with it. It looks pretty new, also, and has been replaced before. We ordered another one anyway, since, well, we really are just that out of ideas.

The battery came with the bike, we've been keeping it on a battery tender, and it hasn't thrown any red flags. I don't know how old it is, but there's no corrosion, and it holds a charge at 12.3-12.5 volts on its own, but the voltage drops across the terminals when the bike is running instead of rising. With the bike running, the battery will go dead eventually to where it will lose spark and not turn back over, and has to be put back on the tender.

We also tried bypassing all of the wiring by running extra wires to the terminals and RR harness, and it didn't change the performance. Nothing we've tried has altered its behavior in the least.

 

a fully charged battery would be up above 12.65 and not sag much under load. Try to measure the voltage while cranking the starter to get some idea of the sag. Also let the bike sit for 5 minutes with the headlights on and engine off, then measure the OCV. 12.3 is about 50% and 12.0 is 25% state of charge, 11.9 is 0%.

 

Sometimes batteries will show proper voltage when they fail but will not carry a load at - get it tested. It actually very well could be a bad battery.