Charging System Upgrade Explained

Discussion in 'Mechanics Garage' started by Chris71Mach1, Aug 21, 2008.

  1. Chris71Mach1

    Chris71Mach1 Insider

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    ok folks, we've all heard the horror stories. battery dies. bike on the side of the road. charged the battery and it still dies. NEW battery and it still dies. (and so on, and so forth.) what it all boils down to is that Honda seems to not have designed the charging systems very well on a lot of their bikes, and from what i can tell, this holds espically true for VFR's. from our perspective, and since we love our bikes so much, THIS SUCKS! after having these problems myself, and doing plenty of research, reading up on this topic, and talking to a number of people who know a LOT more about these bikes than i do, I finally came to the conclusion(s) of repairing the bike myself with a few aftermarket tweaks.

    this stuff is obviously best done when the r/r finally fails you, and you have to replace it altogether. thats not to say that any bike out there couldnt benefit from this thread, and who knows, it may even be a good idea to perform this upgrade on a bike that hasnt failed yet just for the sake of preventative maintainence.

    okay, so here we go. the most common problem here seems to be that the r/r dies prematurely. (hell, my own bike is on at LEAST its third that i can tell). from what ive gathered, the reasons for this are:

    (1) internal grounding. this causes the r/r to not be able send as much ground current out as it needs to, which generates unnecessary heat.

    (2) poor air flow at or around the stock mounting location for the r/r. again, the enemy here is heat. these things get HOT, and it comes as no surprise that over time, they literally fry themselves.

    (3) inadequate pathways for enough current to flow both to charge the battery, and for the standard ground wiring coming out of the r/r.

    now, the fix. i'll address these in that same order.

    (1) the internal grounding of the r/r is an issue. this is easily fixed though, as i simply found an example in the CBR r/r that a previous owner had used on my own bike. this mod is fairly easy, as it is really only adding one wire to the existing r/r, though you have to partially disassemble the male connector block on the *battery* side of the r/r wiring (the connector that has 4 blades in it). You will need a tiny little flathead screwdriver, a length of 20ga wire (id say about 6 inches), and an eyelet to put on the end of the new wire. as youre looking at the top of the connector (the side with the clip up) you will notice 2 red wires on the left, and 2 green wires on the right. the red are the hot leads that send current to the battery to help charge it back up, and the green wires are both grounds. the r/r that i have came with the external ground on the bottom right (the bottom green wire), so thats where i recommend putting this. youll want to use the tiny flat head screwdriver to go in the back of the connector block and push down the clip that holds that blade in place. carefully pull the blade out of the connector block. strip one end of your length of 20ga wire, and gently pry open the part of the connector blade thats holding the stock r/r wire on (it wont take much, the 20ga wire is pretty small). slide the stripped section of the 20ga wire into the blade crimp with the other wire, and use some pliers to crimp it back and secure it. next, just to make 100% sure this wont come apart, dab a small bead of solder down on that blade to hold things in place. now just re-insert the connector blade into the connector block, and install an eyelet on the other end of that 20ga wire. now, youve just modified your r/r to be externally grounded. I ran my external ground wire to my subframe and bolted it there, and it seems to work fine.

    (2) that pesky air flow issue. this can be addressed in a number of ways. some folks relocate the r/r entirely, some find creative ways to duct air to the r/r. I got lucky, and was handed the following link:

    R/R cooler mod

    that howto just rocks. these pc fans are really cheap (i again got lucky and being a professional geek, i have a few of these sitting in a closet ready to be used for some wierd motorcycle hack job). the only creative things i had to figure out was where to run the wires, and i also had to modify (yea, by modify, i mean cut a little hole in) my rear fender so the r/r would mount in the stock position with the added bulk of the fan on it. i ended up running the ground wire for this fan to the external r/r ground on my subframe, and i splice the hot lead for the fan into the hot lead for the license plate light on my bike. this way, the r/r fan will come on anytime you turn the ignition on, and will turn off when you shut your bike down. no ducting, no relocating stuff, and its a win/win!

    (3) the main part of the charging system upgrade. extra wiring. this is the fun part. though one thing i have to say, to you folks who are afraid of doing electrical work like i am, dont be scared! this is easier than it sounds once you sit down and start work!

    basically, ill start by showing you 2 wiring diagrams. one is of the stock r/r configuration, and the other shows a diagram of the r/r wiring with the charging upgrades done to it:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    now here are the tools/materials I used for this: several feet of 12ga wire (youll want to have at least 10 feet handy), wire crimps (unless you want to solder the in-line wiring and use heat shrink tubing), those handy blue wire splice things (i forget what theyre called, but you could also use the button-hook method for wire splicing in this case), needle nose pliers, 4 eyelets to fit on 12ga wire, wire strippers, a roll of electrical tape, 2 inline fuse holders (12ga wire on them of course), and two 10 amp fuses to put in the inline holders.

    I started with the ground wires, cause theyre the easiest. first, youll want to cut the jacket off of the small wiring harness that comes out of the r/r to go to the battery (this is the jacket around 4 wires...2 red and 2 green). pull out 2 lengths of 12ga wire that will run from the r/r to the negative battery post (yea i know the diagram says to use the frame ground, but i just opted to run these to the battery). make sure you run enough slack to tuck them in or run them around stuff to your own liking. this will look as good or as bad as you want it to. use your blue crimp splice thingys to splice each new length of 12ga wire onto one green wire each. on the other end of these wires, strip the end and crimp on an eyelet. make sure the eyelet is big enough for the battery cable bolt to go through (i had to drill my eyelets out just a little for this to happen). okay, so that was pretty easy. wham, bam, thank you viffer. so cool, now onto the positive charge wires. the lengths of 12ga wire you want to run now are going to be somewhat shorter. only run them halfway across the frame. now take your wire crimps and strip one end of each wire, and crimp on a fuse holder to each one. on the other end of these, use a couple of blue splice crimp things to splice each of these into the 2 red wires on the r/r. this is where youll want to move over to the right side of the bike to finish this. now, run 2 more lengths of 12ga wire that will run from the inline fuse holders to the positive battery terminal. strip BOTH ends of these 2 wires. each one will crimp to the fuse holder on one end, and to an eyelet on the other. bolt the eyelets to the positive battery terminal.

    well...ok....thats really about it. itll likely take you as long to read this thread as it will to do the majority of this work, but hopefully this thread can consolidate all the research ive done into a quick place for other vfr owners to find all this useful info.

    another thing that i ran into during this repair was the fact that the female side of the connector from my r/r to my stator was absolutely fried. i implore yall that if yall see burnt, damaged, or outright fried wiring, to just replace stuff. I went to my local Honda dealer (Honda West, at the weatherford traffic circle for you guys in DFW), and they just GAVE me the female connector block and 3 blades. i built the connector with some wires, cut the old one off the stator wiring, and crimped the new one on. an easy fix, cheap as hell, and i dont have to worry about running damaged wiring anymore.
     
  2. dualcert

    dualcert New Member

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    GREAT write up!! I had my bike crank slowly last night when I got on her to ride home, then after she fired she died. Cranked again and off we went. I found that my battery connections were loose when I got home, good idea to make sure all the connections are tight and clean as you had stated. I'll be doing these mods you outlined as preventitive maintanance, probably this weekend as the never ending tropical storm Fay is here. :bs:
     
  3. dualcert

    dualcert New Member

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    Did the small fan mod. Hooked it up and mounted as per that brits how-to. Moves a whole lot of air, should add some extra life to my R/R now...
     
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  4. pontiac_banshee

    pontiac_banshee New Member

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  5. How2

    How2 New Member

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    see electrosport.com for VFR R/R fix, known electrical issues
     
  6. Chris71Mach1

    Chris71Mach1 Insider

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    no, do NOT see electrosport.com for anything. not for an r/r, not for a stator, not for anything. every single person ive ever talked to who has bought electrosport products for their VFR ended up dissapointed, or even angry at the performance (or lack thereof) of their electrosport purchase.
     
  7. rangemaster

    rangemaster New Member

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    Based on my limited experience...

    ELECTROSPORT:bs:ANYTHING RICK's:smile:Staying with the OEM:pope2:
     
  8. How2

    How2 New Member

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    Greetings:

    I like the colored lines in your article. A little color is nice to have now and then! Incidentially, there is nothing wrong with electro sport. Try taking your cooked RR back to anybody and see if they keep giving you new ones. Buuuut, you are on the right trail regarding :

    (1) the internal grounding of the r/r is an issue.

    However,there is something wrong with the electrical engineering flaw in the vfr from 1986 to the most current models.

    http://vfrworld.com/forums/general-vfr-discussions/10714-honda-recall.html

    Of course your going to continue to cook the RR if you haven't found the originating problem. Duh! The Electrosport article puts the tail on the donkey. I might say (IMHO) its rather silly to put a cat among the pigeons if you haven't read the article.

    Cheers

    H2

    BTW, so decent of Honda to finally start to recall that dodgey piece of s....
    I'm going all teary eyed over it!
     
    Last edited: Aug 25, 2008
  9. olde biker

    olde biker New Member

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    rats nest

    thanks for your info I used it to clean up the mess that someone else made when they tried to do the mod. However I did get lazy and ran the two extra green wires to the batt. I hope it will still work as well. Thanks again!!!
     
  10. pontiac_banshee

    pontiac_banshee New Member

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    Actually!!!!

    I bought my first replacement from Electrosport and it was a NIGHTMARE. After 1 replacement and a threat to call our States Consumer Protection Agency I got a person on the line who told me that all the 3rd Generation R/R's that they had were defective from their overseas provider and it was A KNOWN ISSUE. She couldn't explain why their tech staff was not aware of this and was sending out a bad replacements to replace the bad originals. They would only send a credit back to the distributor which sells to the local Honda shop so they even made it time consuming to get my money back and buy a new one.

    I don't care if a company has some issues with quality (there is no perfect parts out there) but sending out more bad ones when "Corporate" is aware of a major issue with them does not meet the smell :bs: factor. FOR THAT REASON ALONE I WOULD NEVER BUY FROM THEM AGAIN.
     
  11. Chris71Mach1

    Chris71Mach1 Insider

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    dont worry, it works just fine. i ran those to the battery myself, and I havent had a single problem since.
     
  12. olde biker

    olde biker New Member

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    charging like a champ

    Thanks Chris, I finished the mod. and installed the fan on the R/R and she is charging 14.5 and staying cool.
     
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  13. Chris71Mach1

    Chris71Mach1 Insider

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    outstanding olde....im glad to hear it. i figure if i can just help one other bike stay on the road with the time in invest in something like this thread, its worth the time and then some. at this point, i can safely say it was time and effort well spent.
     
  14. wolfgrw

    wolfgrw New Member

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    Hi! I'm having the "Fried RR Problem", again.. i'm going to follow this howto. I have a fan for the "RR Fan Mod" but it's a little powerfull, i think. It's from Thermaltake and it consumes about 0.70 amps! :| I don't have the smallest idea if the battery can feed this baby and crank up the bike at the same time. Can you help?

    Thx!
    Regards!
     
  15. Chris71Mach1

    Chris71Mach1 Insider

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    im not 100% sure of the amperage output of a typical stator, but i do know that the voltage output will generally be anywhere from 13.5 to 14.? volts under normal running conditions, so to recharge the battery to its required 12.6 volt full charge. to me, .7 amps doesnt sound like a whole TON of draw for any one device. I did some quick research and I found that it seems most PC fans (such as the one i used in my howto, and on my own vfr) tend to draw anywhere between .5 and .6 amps as they run, and mine runs 100% of the time that my key is turned on (ie as long as the headlight and brake light are on with the key in the 'run' position, my R/R fan is spinning).

    bottom line, if youve verified that your fan is drawing .7 amps, and you dont go turning your engine on and off a whole bunch (ie killing the motor at every traffic light in rush hour traffic), I dont see any danger of you running your battery down prematurely at all.

    good luck, wolfgrw, and if you have any other questions, ill be happy to do my best to answer them for ya.

    ride safe!

    Chris
     
  16. 78EDGES

    78EDGES New Member

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    Chris, This is a very helpful write up ,thanks for taking the time to make it right.

    Thanks
    78 edges.
     
  17. wolfgrw

    wolfgrw New Member

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    The .7 amps i'm talking about, are part of the specification on the fan itself, didn't do any measuring. From what you are saying about the "general" fan, i think i'm ok then. Thx again!

    Best regards!

     
  18. wolfgrw

    wolfgrw New Member

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    RR wiring

    Ok, my RR have 5 wires/blades instead of 4. With the clip up(the on that comes from the RR), two red on the left, two green on the middle and one black on the right, as the picture shows. Also you say, "as it is really only adding one wire to the existing r/r, though you have to partially disassemble the male connector block on the *battery* side of the r/r wiring (the connector that has 4 blades in it).", my male connector(the one that comes from the battery) with the clip up has the red connectors o the opposite side, so how will i know witch green connector is it? can i just invert it? Just one more thing, since i live in europe, and we use the metric system, i don't have the smallest idea witch wire section in mm2 is "20ga", he he. I've searched some conversion tables but there seems to be various applications to these tables. Do you have any idea of the correspondence? Final thing, did the fan mod, you were right, very easy! But with the engine running the battery wasn't receiving more than 14v, is that enough? Saw "olde biker" saying his RR was doing 14.5v and started to wonder(i wanda, i wonder, i wanna)...

    Best regards!
    Sry being such a pain... :(
     

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  19. Chris71Mach1

    Chris71Mach1 Insider

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    ok to answer the wire size question, 20ga is 0.8 mm2 from what i can tell.

    on the ground wire issue, i just wanna be 100% clear on where it goes, too (id HATE to be the reason somebody miswired their bike and caused damage to it). on the "battery side" i mean the wire goes on one of the 2 connectors that are on the r/r, that being the r/r connector that plugs into the rest of the bike wiring harness going toward the battery (ie not the side that plugs into the stator). as far as the 5 pin connector, you really threw me a curve ball on this one. im really wondering what that black wire there is for...id say that if the black wire is a ground, you could run the external ground wire to there, and if you wanted to run it to a green wire, if it were me, id most likely run the external ground wire to the green wire that's on the bottom (the one without the black wire adjacent to it).

    as for the 14v getting to the battery, that's just fine. your battery runs at 12.6 volts, and 14 is plenty to ensure that it has ample charge at any given time. if you're still concerned about this, id bet the extra wiring between the r/r and battery would fix that right up.

    finally, don't think you're being a pain, this is actually making this thread really interesting for me and getting me out on the web to learn new stuff.
     
  20. Paul47

    Paul47 New Member

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    One problem with this setup is that the two 10A fuses are now in parallel with the 30A fuse. It's not clear how fuses act in parallel (does fuse resistance go up or down when it gets hot?), but it could be equivalent to a 50A fuse, which is enough to fry some wires if you get a short somewhere.

    I would not use crimp connectors in these high-current paths, but solder. Crimps are better than spade connectors though (as used in stock). I just pulled the pink connector off the solenoid on my bike (very difficult) and found, looking inside, that connector was semi-molten. :eek: Not as bad as my connector between alternator and r/r was, but bad enough. I'm tempted to solder wires directly to the solenoid spades. Hard to do though, and likely to melt plastic. Hmmm...

    I'd say the most important thing is to eliminate spade connectors in these high current paths, if you can. The older the bike, the more corroded they get, and the more they are likely to fry. If they cannot easily be eliminated, as it seems in this case, perhaps they can be upgraded to heavy-duty versions and filled with di-electric grease to stop corrosion. That is, instead of having the connector with 4 pins (on top of the solenoid), use 4 singles, being careful to put them in the right places!

    Here is a (Wikipedia link) on wire guages by the way, with current capacity and metric equivalents.

    How about this for an alternative? Simply eliminate the problem-prone high current connections on the top of the solenoid, by cutting the red and red/white wires there (pulling the fuse won't completely eliminate current flow there). Then buy a small fuse block, stick the 30A fuse from the solenoid in it, position it near the r/r, connect the two red/white wires directly off the r/r to one side of the fuse block, and also the red wire just cut from the top of the solenoid. Connect a single 10-guage wire from the other side of the fuse block directly to the battery. Thus no spade connectors in the high current path.

    You might have to look at the VFR wiring diagram to get what I am talking about. You would be simply reproducing the old circuit without spade connectors, and breaking the old circuit. There would be no problem with parallel fuses.

    As to specially grounding the r/r case, I doubt that is needed. First, it is grounded already through the bolts to the frame, and also through the green wires. Do put heat sink compound between r/r and frame though. It wouldn't hurt to add a small aluminum sheet between the r/r and the frame as well, just to add a bit more heat radiating area.

    I agree with your method of grounding the green r/r wires, again bypassing all problematic high current spade connections. Going to the battery is just fine. Do make sure the connection between battery negative and frame ground is good though, and maybe use di-electric grease there to avoid any corrosion between steel bolt and aluminum frame.

    You should have replaced the connector between r/r and stator with solder connections. The spade connections you just re-installed will just fry again.

    The fan is a good idea for cooling the r/r.
     
    Last edited: Aug 29, 2009
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