I'm posting here as it may get more views , sorry if this is wrong . Hello people Just need your brains please I have a Kawasaki er5 , I use it for all my dirty hardworking tours , 3 elephant rally's , dragon , and Stella alpina rally . She works hard and has always been very good to me . After this years elephant she needed love , I've gone all the normals , chain , sprockets , bearings and seals , fork seals etc . I noticed the rev counter died and have read it's a sign of the reg/rec , my battery has gone dead a few times so I bought a MOSFET er5 , straight plug in . All swooped over , easy . After a run yesterday the battery was flat and I had to bump her , got home and started testing , I'm only getting 11.8 volts ish even when revving it , its the same voltage with the rec disconnected so I take it it's the battery giving that after a charge , I've got the book so I've tested the stator and I have 60 v on each yellow , tested the old rec and the readings are about right , so was it faulty ?? I haven't got the specs for the new one so I've emailed the company for them . The only thing I'm worried about , I had the new one plugged in trying to test it hanging from the bike and after 2/3 mins running Christ it got hot . Is this a sign it's faulty ? Any ideas or where I'm going wrong would be appreciated Thank you Chris
Regulators do get hot... that's how they work. I take it you have 60 Volts AC RMS? What multimeter do you have? Please note once your lead acid battery goes flat (below 10.5 volts) it will be irreparable. By that I mean it will not have it's original cold crank amps and will self discharge more quickly. This is part of the ageing process, however damaging deep discharge massively increases this. Check all your connections are bright and clean, with no corrosion and reconnect a new good quality lead acid battery. Check that you have no more than 14.5Volts DC coming out of your regulator set when revving (no battery connected).
Hello I know they get hot , but this is very hot , I've never had reason to check before so wasn't sure now hot . I have 60-65 volts at 4000 revs between all 3 wires from the stator , RMS ? I've checked the connector from the stator and that looks good , I've removed the connector blocked between the reg and loom as it was really corroded , I'll sort that once working . I've tested again the old one and it does seem faulty from the readings in the book . With either reg rec on there isn't an output at all to check , both get bloody hot tho . I have a new battery easy to go on I just don't want to kill it . My meter is a new one £15 from amazon , can not remember the make . Thank you
So disclaimer I don't know a lot about Ducatis and even less about Kawasakis First thing I'd do is get the battery charged before commencing testing. Charge it off the bike with a charger wait for an hour or two then test. The voltage should be >13.5 on a good battery but anything over 13 should be fine The battery can act like a reservoir and take a while to "fill" during that time the battery can quite easily drag down the system voltage. Therefore what you read may well mislead you into thinking the charging system is duff when it's not Nearly all bikes nowadays use a permanet magnet exciter and a shunt regualtor. The Alternator output is only RPM dependent and the regualtor has to sink excess current (energy) it does this as heat. If you have the Reg/Rec off the bike it's got nowhere to easily discharge that heat energy and will get reet toasty, do it for long and you'll fry the Reg/Rec. Dunno if this will help you check out the Reg/Rec Your Alternator sounds fine, but until you check what the system is doing with a good battery you could be on a hiding to nothing Just what I'd do
I do have a new battery to go on , i didn't want to put it on in case it damaged it but what you say makes sense . I did wonder about it being off the bike , made it easier to test but clearly made it worse !, I'll have a watch , thank you .
A £15 Amazon multimeter is unlikely to measure AC with any accuracy. I've wasted plenty of time helping solve problems exacerbated by a poor multimeter. The connector block sounds like your issue. It needs to have a low resistance to allow the charge to flow to the circuits and battery. Lots of useful stuff above
