Bad Boy Posted September 3, 2010 Share Posted September 3, 2010 History: I have 2002 VFR with 84k miles. 2-1/2 to 3 years and 25k miles ago I burned up 3 stators and replaced the alternator, R/R, battery, and had wiring recall done. Since then I replaced the over heated 30 amp fuse holder with beefer holder and wire, ran the R/R monitor wire to the 30 amp fuse holder, and dielectric grease connectors between alternator and battery. The bike has had no issues in the last 2-1/2 years. Accessories: electric jacket connected to battery and radar detector connected to tail light. Recently the 3 yellow alternator wires are getting warmer, uncomfortable to touch but has not burnt the connector. The R/R at times also gets very warm to the touch when bike is idling. The voltages at battery have not changed in the last two years: key off 12.7V key on 11.8V idle 13.9v idle high beam 13.0V 5000 rpm 14.0v 5000 rpm high beam 13.9V Voltage at the tail light where the radar detector volt meter is connected has over time dropped from 13v to 12.2v, I suspect drop is due to corroding connectors. My questions are: Is this voltage at low end of normal or indicate a weak system? Is this good enough or are there fixes I should consider so to avoid future problems? Are there things I should check? Did the recall address all the grounding issues? VFRness? I admit I am paranoid after all I have been through with this bike and having been stranded 800 miles from home. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Contributer kaldek Posted September 3, 2010 Member Contributer Share Posted September 3, 2010 Recently the 3 yellow alternator wires are getting warmer, uncomfortable to touch but has not burnt the connector. The R/R at times also gets very warm to the touch when bike is idling. Hmm, you sound a lot like me! 2002 with over 80,000 miles and a history of electrics being OK, then sponataneously bad, then good again after a fix. I have only killed one stator, and I did my own ground wires as an alternative to the wiring recall. I also have a replacement SH689A regulator/rectifier and my own wiring from the regulator back to the 30amp fuse (using an aftermarket fuse holder). If your stator wires are starting to heat up now, the only thing I can suggest is checking that the connector block is clean and free of corrosion, followed by checking all ground wires and grounding points for corrosion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Contributer IntAceptor Posted September 3, 2010 Member Contributer Share Posted September 3, 2010 Recently the 3 yellow alternator wires are getting warmer, uncomfortable to touch but has not burnt the connector. The R/R at times also gets very warm to the touch when bike is idling. Hmm, you sound a lot like me! 2002 with over 80,000 miles and a history of electrics being OK, then sponataneously bad, then good again after a fix. I have only killed one stator, and I did my own ground wires as an alternative to the wiring recall. I also have a replacement SH689A regulator/rectifier and my own wiring from the regulator back to the 30amp fuse (using an aftermarket fuse holder). If your stator wires are starting to heat up now, the only thing I can suggest is checking that the connector block is clean and free of corrosion, followed by checking all ground wires and grounding points for corrosion. You can cut and splice heavier wires from the stator to the connectors then jump the connectors or remove them completely. Jumping them allows for easy emergency repairs if you are carrying a spare R/R. You can also add an extra aluminum plate behind the R/R as a more efficient heat sync with heat sync grease and a metal computer fan over the fins on the R/R for cooling. I did this to mine and now have 58K on the original R/R with no issues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auspanglish Posted September 3, 2010 Share Posted September 3, 2010 Sounds a little on the low end of acceptable Voltage readings... My history: 2003 VTEC (Spain: so no wiring harness nor stator recall) Installed VFRness around 55000 km. 1st stator fried at around 65000 km Replaced with aftermarket stator. Short time later R/R fried (dead battery put me onto it... stator readings were fine) Replaced both 2nd stator fried at 75000 km Replaced with OEM stator and replaced R/R (aftermarket) and battery (YTZ14s) just in case. Few days later the stator-R/R connector fried. Cut out the connector from the equation and hardwired stator to R/R. 85000 km (just the other week) I was going over the electrical system and noticed the 3 yellow wires dowstream from stator-R/R connector (that is to say: between this connector and the R/R) getting very hot... disconnected it to take stator readings... fine... connected it back up and it started to smoke... shut off bike and curse Mother Honda and the horse she rode in on. Discovered that one of the yellow wires was so hot you couldn't even touch it... the others were relatively cool (they will warm up, this is normal, but usually you can keep hold on them for several seconds at least... even longer is better). So my question to myself and fellow VFR buddies was... R/R or Stator?? An engineer friend of mine who deals with this stuff all day long had the brilliant idea of pulling the hot one and taking readings to see if at least this might get one back home... it probably would work if you disconnected one headlight and were real smooth on the throttle as the rectification of the AC volts would no longer level peak voltage into a smooth DC wave... and if you're radiator fan weren't coming on all the time (i.e. cool ambient temps)... and you didn't spend too long with the motor idling.... anyway, this is just a long-way-from-home desperate-act-of-survival tip... So, in order to eliminate R/R or Stator as the culprit, we swapped the order of the wires around... let's call the female half of the connector (stator side) F and the male half (R/R side) M... so wire-wise we have the stock order of F1-M1, F2-M2, F3-M3. The M side wires are the ones getting hot and we had removed these from the white plastic housing and stuck them into the female housing in a different order... previously F1-M1 would get hot (well, really M1, but M1 connected into F1)... if we rearranged things, as in F1-M2, F2-M3, F3-M1... then if F1-M2 were the one heating up, the rpoblem would probably reside in the stator side of things... but actually F3-M1 was the one getting BBQ hot... so it was fairly certain the R/R was fugged... While we were at it, we decided to check out the (famous over here in Spain) BYC... bit like KFC... Big Yellow Connector (read "Kentucky Fried Connector")... this is a reasonably large yellow connector through which a whole bunch of ground wires run, in the front subharness... it's not really large in size, but there are 12 wires running through it... each of a different thickness (guage)... three thicker ones and the rest are puny. This connector seems to join all sorts of ground wires (seemingly from sensors and the like) but with the surprising effectiveness of an ashtray on a VFR. Nill, null, zero, ziltch, none and sweet f-a effectiveness. It's a piece of crap and hardly creates any decent connections whatsoever. So we eliminated the connector, twirled the ends together and wrapped another section of cable around this (to bolt the other end of this to ground on the chassis) and soldered the lot with a torch solderer... I can say my VTEC transition and Fi system in general is running smoother so this probably means the ECU is receiving proper readings from sensors now because the surging issues had been getting intolerable lately. I'm currently running a second hand OEM R/R a buddy lent to me for the meantime... I picked this up at the post office yesterday... Courtesy of Josh (Tightwad) at Wiremybike.com... the supposedly YOU-BEAUT mofset supercool R/R unit... so I'll be installing it this weekend to see how it goes... thing is it doesn't have the B&W feedback... so wondering if I should wire in the one from the VFRness (which I currently have completely disconnected) or not bother... I'm getting a stable 14,3 V with the 2nd hand OEM R/R... battery reads 12,9... Seems OK but it used to give out 14,6 V... before all this. Keen to try out the Mofsetter... 'cause I'm about to give up on the VTEC forever.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tightwad Posted September 3, 2010 Share Posted September 3, 2010 The new R/R doesn't adjust based on the monitor wire voltage...so just ignore that part from the VFRness and from the OE harness. I like the idea of switching the order of the stator wires to tell if it is the stator or the r/r causing the heat! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bad Boy Posted September 3, 2010 Author Share Posted September 3, 2010 Recently the 3 yellow alternator wires are getting warmer, uncomfortable to touch but has not burnt the connector. The R/R at times also gets very warm to the touch when bike is idling. Hmm, you sound a lot like me! 2002 with over 80,000 miles and a history of electrics being OK, then sponataneously bad, then good again after a fix. I have only killed one stator, and I did my own ground wires as an alternative to the wiring recall. I also have a replacement SH689A regulator/rectifier and my own wiring from the regulator back to the 30amp fuse (using an aftermarket fuse holder). If your stator wires are starting to heat up now, the only thing I can suggest is checking that the connector block is clean and free of corrosion, followed by checking all ground wires and grounding points for corrosion. How do I find these grounding points and wires you speak off? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auspanglish Posted September 4, 2010 Share Posted September 4, 2010 The new R/R doesn't adjust based on the monitor wire voltage...so just ignore that part from the VFRness and from the OE harness. I like the idea of switching the order of the stator wires to tell if it is the stator or the r/r causing the heat! OK thanks for the reply Josh... Just a side note... even though my VTEC has fried two stators... post VFRness installation... I believe the VFRness has saved other components in the electrical system on my bike from frying... for example, the whole main-fuse-holder assembly and associated wiring is fine... no signs of overheating... the bike hardly ever blows bulbs for example... so I still believe the VFRness has been of good use to my VFR... there's some other underlying problem in the Honda installation and I would still buy Joshua's products despite the bad luck I've had with my bike... actually, I still do :biggrin: I'm seriously hoping this mod to the BYC will make a difference... but I don't know (strangely enough) where the main grounding points are on the bike... Bueller?? Thought: maybe if you follow the big black negative battery cable to where it anchors on the bike... Don't know if you've done it, but try doing the BBC (big blue connector) mod as well... this consists in bridging the green wire at the bottom of the connector (you can see the BBC in the photos I posted, in front of the LHS radiator), that is: take a new piece of cable of decent thickness (12 Gauge maybe), make it long enough to splic into the green cable on the forward side of the BBC, peel off a section of isolating material about 7 cm along the new cable, splice this into the continuation of the green cable on the aft side of the BBC... then solder on a ring connector to the free end of the new cable and anchor it down at one of the two bolts that screw into the chassis (where the safety cable that stops the fuel tank from lifting all the way up and back bolts into the chassis). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.