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My 5G gasket(s) finally came in, which gave me the confidence to remove the 5G stator from its cover. I got to measuring the differences between the 5th and 6th gen versions, and it would seem that about the only similarity between them is that the inner mounting diameters and bolt patterns are the same. That's where it ends. I'll lay out the measurements I took below, using a digital slide caliper. Some of the measurements could be made accurately and repeatably, but others were somewhat guesses where the wire wrapped around each of the poles. It probably requires an electrical engineer with familiarity of these types of alternators to definitively say whether this makes a difference to power potential at various RPM's of each - definitely beyond my ability. I measured in inches - apologies to metric folks, but you get the idea. 5G 6G Inner mounting circumference 1.65 1.65 Outer circumference 4.23 4.54 Core thickness 1.05 .89 Height of pole(s) above core .84 .90 Width of each pole 1.40 1.30 Depth of pole .54 .59 The last 3 measurements took some estimating. The wiring obscures the true measurement, so I did my best to keep it consistent. The last item is interesting. The core appears to be a stack of plates vs a solid block of machined or cast metal. The 5th gen clearly has thicker ones. I used a fine dental pick to drag over each , counting each click as it slid across. The 5G core had a count of 22, and the 6G a count of 46. I could be off by a few - regardless it's quite noticeable just looking at it. But does that make any difference to the power potential of the stator? My intuition says no, but if not then why would Honda make such a significant change? Lastly, the 4 mounting bolts are significantly different length. I put the 6G core in the 5G cover and ran the bolts down by hand. Something seemed odd as I encountered resistance from the bolts but the core had play in it relative to the cover. Be careful if doing this swap and using the 5G bolts - with the 6G thinner core, shorter bolts will be required or the result could be stripped threads in the cover. In summary, the 6th gen stator is larger diameter, thinner, with poles (both have 18) that are taller but narrower. Possibly this allows for more wraps of wire which might be helpful - not sure. At any rate, it's not clear to me what this swap might accomplish. My real interest is in improving output at idle, as voltage going down the road is a steady 14.5v. It's mostly at stops particularly when the fan is running that things go south and I see low 12's for voltage. I am running an 847 R/R, so it's not OEM. If there's anyone that definitively knows if the differences in two stators would produce different results, it would be great to hear. Cheers

Yep. Seems like I do. Even pissed at myself.

There were a lot of "grey imports" into the UK in the mid-late 1990s, and at the time, most European models only illuminated one of the headlights. So, unless you check your frame number, you may never know for sure if yours was grey imported into the UK where it was sold as "new". Or, you might just have a blown bulb! But if yours was a grey import, the grey importer would probably have fitted a UK-spec headlamp unit (to get the dip right), but may not have bothered to change the wiring to allow both bulbs to be used. Bikes which were factory-designed to have only one lamp illuminated on dip/low beam often lacked a lo-beam relay, as V4 Rosso mentioned. So if you do convert to use both bulbs, you should add a lo-beam relay. Otherwise, you WILL ruin your headlight switch, eventually. Honda 400cc grey imports had similar wiring issues, not from having only 1x 55w/60 H4, but from having 2x 35w/60 H4s. People used to throw in regular H4s, not realising that these bikes only had relays on the hi-beam side. Many fried headlight switches ensued... Ciao, JZH

ha ha! I think that this forum, and others, seem like our "babies." A lot of time goes into them from frequent posters with many more single time visitors (not you) barking about the completeness and timeliness of free answers. It isn't...equal in that regard. I get a lot from this site, so I try to give a lot...and like most of us, don't take offense if at all possible. People are what they are...when they are. You never know what is going on in someone's life or in their day. 🙂

"Gaslight" directed by George Cukor in 1944 and starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. Basically the bad guy husband in the 1880's in London tries to drive his wife crazy, including turning down the gaslights and then pretending nothing was wrong. Not a bad film for its era. I'm pretty sure this key bit of information will solve your rear shock issue immediately! 😎

(A little pedantry to lighten the mood: flipping the eccentric on a 5th gen would drop the ride height considerably; unlike the 3rd-4th gens, the 5th gen's OEM orientation is already with the axle in the bottom of the arc.) (Not that I am suggesting this as a solution to a too-high ride height! Something appears to be wrong, and changing the ride height in this way could just make the other things worse.) Ciao, JZH

In case you guys haven't already seen this.

Wonder how much it actually costs to fully transform an RC36-2 into an RC30...

On mine there are two relays under the nose cone (behind the dashboard really). One for each head light. I don't think they're fed directly from the switch in either case. In the attached pic you'll see a rubber cover which isn't holding anything. I think one relay is held in here and another identical one on the other side. I'd an issue once before where the headlights just completely failed on me after exiting a motorway toll booth just as I got into darkness and hit full beams. Scary as fuck when you're tipping 120kph. Never happened again and could never find the reason why it happened but this pic was taken during my "investigation".

Not all have twin low beams as shown in the schematic below of the 4th gen for a couple of markets (most of europe) @weerab: The conversion can be as simple as adding a third prong to the right headlight connector splicing into the left connector. But make sure the current low beam is switched using a relay and not directly from the headlight switch (as shown in the above schematic).