I replaced the battery shortly after purchasing the bike some six months or so ago (in hindsight, probably a waste of money). Then I fitted a voltmeter to monitor what was going on with the charging, as the battery kept going flat every couple of weeks unless I ran with the headlight disconnected for a few days. I put this down to the 90/130W bulb, and swapped to a 55/100W. Then it went flat again, and the voltmeter indicated SOMETHING IS UP WITH YOUR CHARGING SYSTEM!
Crap.
I'd been down this road with my last bike (VFR), so I wasn't pleased. Before I ran out and bought a new R/R, I thought I'd better do some checking. It might just be something simple. Oh. There's a broken stator wire, making intermittent contact. Fixed that, tested, and everything seemed schweeet. Yeah!!
Rode the bike to work, everything looks good. 13.x volts, 13.x volts, 13.x volts. The after a few km, 12.y volts, 11.z, 10.a, 9.b, and finally down as low as 8.5 rolling into the garage at work, by which stage the tacho had stopped working, the lights were off, and the engine had just about run out of ergs for the sparks. CRAP.
So. Some testing later, and I bought a new heavy-duty R/R, rewired everything, and we're rolling again (sounds easy, but much of this took place in the basement at work, in lunchtimes, before/after work, etc.)
The new R/R won't fit where the old one did (and WHY would you want one there, where it gets NO cooling?!?) So the new heavily-finned one lives under the left front of the seat, where it can shed heat into my nads and/or left leg.
There are now NO plugs between the stator, R/R and battery, and I have a healthy 14.x volts going into the system from just over tickover.
And my brakes are still crap, and I still have old erl and unbalanced carbs.
