question about RR failure..

Okay so this has been a huge issue here as of late.. What I am wondering is this, on the model /year VFR that has had the recall, or even not (like mine) have all bikes that haven't had the recall work done on them had the RR fail? and if the onesd that haven't failed is it because the bike is on a battery tender....I know....I know... afew people basically have their bikes live on battery tenders when they aren't riding them and they say that this is the reason for not having the RR failure. I can say without a doubt that my bike have never been hooked to a battery tender and last spring I replaced the original RR... now that being said It did sit for 5 years.
So if the wiring problem causes the RR to go out( thats the recall right) then the RR should be fine after the upgrade... the little bastards run hot so I see the need for "extracooling"

Does an RR that is in a bike , that is on a battery tender(life support) run any cooler than an RR that is on a bike that doesn't sit on life support?

ayone got that answer?

 

Smooth move Ex-Lax

op2: I shall sit quietly in the corner and enjoy the show.

 

It is not possible to know if ALL the bikes without recall wiring have had R/R failures, battery tender or not.

The reason for this is simple, Honda did not install a device that notifies HMC (or anyone else )when the R/R on a VFR fails.

Hope this answers your question.

 

Dibs on another corner.

 

Not another semi-circlejerk I hope.

 

At a guess, I would say that the biggest contributors to R/R failure would be ambient temperature and electrical load (sounds obvious, right? :smile. Most bikes have an "SCR" type of R/R, the VFR included, which constantly run at full output (when the bike is running, that is). Whatever electrical energy that is not used by the motorcycle and accessories is shunted to ground through the SCRs built in to the regulator. So essentially, the more accessories you have, the cooler the R/R will run. The additional electricity gets passed along to the wiring and various loads which have the burden of dissipating the heat. Since heat is the big killer of electronic components, it stands to reason that the cooler the R/R runs, the longer it will last.

And, like all products made by all manufacturers, there is always the fine line between quality and profitability. The people who make R/R's for a living buy the cheapest components that will meet their requirements. MOST of the time, they are good enough. Sometimes, they aren't. The people who make SCRs and diodes for a living make them in batches, and every batch has variables.

About the only thing you can do is to make sure that all the connections are clean and dry. The actual incident of failure is probably pretty low, percentage-wise. I think it seems worse than it really is because we only hear about the ones that are problems.

There is a different kind of R/R that uses a component called a MOSFET to control output; they run much cooler. They are standard equipment on FJR's, some (if not all) CBR's, some Triumph models and who knows what else.

 

Thanks lgn..... that makes more sense than previous posters...

I figured folks that have multiple VFR's could probably do this experiment. of ourse its totally random because the age of the bikes would have to be identical as well as hours on them......blah blah blah.. to truely get a scientifc outcome..
Thank you..

 

:biggrin: No, I arrived at that party a little bit late. I had nothing constructive to add...

But thanks!

 

I'm not sure if you're asking or commenting... :smile:

Anyway, if you are asking, those links will explain the operating principles of the components pretty well. I thought I had saved some schematics of an SCR and MOSFET R/R on this computer, but I can't find them right off. If you google "motorcycle regulator rectifier mosfet", you'll get lots of links to various motorcycle forums. A gentleman with the username of DEcosse has been a major contributor on several of the forums, and is very knowledgeable on the subject. He has also researched and sourced various suppliers of the high current connector parts that typically need to be replaced after a meltdown.

 

Well this is all very civilised.
Good info lgn001

 

I started doing a quick sketch in AutoCAD of the schematics. Before I bother finishing them, I'll see if I can find some on the internet and provide a link. I KNOW there was a vendor site that had them side by side, but I didn't bookmark it. Doh!

 

Turtles rule.........................crap, wrong R/R thread :doh:

 

He probably stayed away because at that point you were so jacked up on GLL429 you would have come at him like a spider monkey.